Division 9
by silversheath
Summary: Senior Inspector Ayase Eli and her partner Inspector Sonoda Umi receive special orders to hunt down criminally asymptomatic Toujou Nozomi after a brief altercation. Things are never that easy. (AU inspired by Rinforzando)
1. Chapter 1

"Inspector Ayase, I'm reporting for duty," says the young woman. She stands tall, coolly, eyes half-lidded as though she can't wait for the ordeal to be over. The weak drizzle of rain is making a mess of her bright hair – strands of crimson pop up every which way like it's been attacked with a cat's tongue, slightly ruining her look of unconcern.

Eli ignores this; gazes dispassionately at her wristcom-turned-street-map, watching the neon green dot that marks her partner's location slide across the sleek black background of the screen, darting along the gas-blue grids of the streets. When the flickering mark reaches a point on the interface a block away, Eli finally lifts her eyes to the other person, addressing her smoothly. "My title, First-Year Inspector Nishikino, is Senior Inspector. You might want to get out of the street."

Nishikino Maki blinks, then lurches sideways awkwardly, onto the graveled drive by stepping through the boulevard, dainty foot sinking into the thin centimeters of mud. She straightens next to Eli at nearly the same height. They stand stoically for a few moments, Eli allowing rain to pattern her in arching droplets while her newest Inspector shifts uncomfortably in the silence. Maki's eyes dart down several times; she appears to have a brief internal struggle, then reaches down and scrapes some of the squelching street mire from her sensible, glossy flats.

The evening life in this part of town is practically nonexistent. They're a fair distance away from the shopping centers bustling with consumers and security drones, instead surrounding themselves with dilapidated buildings with exposed, rusty pipes and screeching, unhinged doorways leading into smoky darkness that smells of disuse. The only people that have passed are rather seedy characters with high collars and the scuttled, jerky walks of the suspicious. But that's not what they're here for.

Eli doesn't let her relief show when the van approaches, ripping down the pot-holed street and coming to a violent, dusty stop barely feet away from the sidewalk where she stands in her dampening navy jacket. The side of the car grates open with the sound of heavy locking mechanisms clicking wildly, and Inspector Sonoda Umi emerges from around the doors, swinging a thick Dominator gun over her bony shoulder with casual, familiar ease.

"Senior Inspector Ayase," she acknowledges with a curt nod, and some of her flowing hair falls across her sharp face, obscuring the angles of her prominent facial bones, though not the flash of ghost-blue in her eyes as the Dominator powers up.

"Good evening, partner," Eli says with a bit less formality than usual, though she thinks young Maki seems like she could use some more decorum with professional interactions. "Look here, we've traced the signals of that phony matchmaking site to this run-down apartment complex," she brandishes her Holo device at the creaky-looking building. It looks like it will collapse at the slightest gust of wind.

"Oh, that old thing?" comments Umi, and swings her Dominator to her other shoulder. "I can't believe people were so quick to join that website."

Eli shrugs and crosses to the van, where a hidden compartment unfolds with more clicking and offers another Dominator by the hilt. She yanks it out of the holder smoothly, and listens to the clear voice of the Sibyl-controlled system blink across her mind. "They're hopeful, aren't they, that they find someone to be with. And I think the attraction really lies within the rebellion of the thing – an illegal matching service that _doesn't_ use Sibyl's Hue system? Sign up all the wannabe mavericks," she snorts. The rain is starting to come down harder, and a single, thick splash lands on her cheek and rolls down poetically, like a teardrop. It's cold.

"Why don't we have any Enforcers tonight?" asks Maki, and retrieves her registered Dominator with something like nerves etched in her expression.

"This is just an informal call," explains Eli when Umi doesn't deign to reply, "technically, setting up a non-Sibyl authorized dating forum is not strictly illegal, but it's worth a visit to warn the creator that other anti-Sibyl nonsense is not to be permitted."

"We are such sticklers for rules, aren't we?" says Maki, and swipes the rain with her Dominator in one hand, showing a half-grin that is more of a baring of teeth.

As Senior Inspector, Eli gets all the fun jobs, like knocking at the doors of possible criminals. "Open up. This is Inspector Ayase of the Ministry of Welfare's Public Safety Bureau. I am an inspection officer of the Criminal Investigation Department, and I'd like to have a few words with the owner of this… house," she finishes lamely, attention drifting to the admittedly gross curb appeal, and curses internally. The crusty door does not open.

"Are you reading anything from inside? Heat signatures, outgoing communications, activated internal Holos?" she asks Maki, to distract herself.

"All three," Maki replies, tapping quickly at her wristcom device, Dominator dangling from two fingers, and Eli resists the urge to correct her grip. Maki is not twelve and does not need an overbearing adult.

"Analyst Koizumi reports that the tracking is definitely coming from this very building," reports Umi, who by contrast is standing with her Dominator in two hands, pointed at the door, amber eyes shining in the gloomy evening weather. "We have authority to enter from Sibyl."

Eli rummages in her Inspector jacket pocket and puts her MWPSB badge to the door's shining red scanner, thanking the stars that the building, falling apart though it is, has enough modernity for her to not have to break down a slab of wood four inches thick. With a few whirring clicks, her CID badge overrides the lock, and the door is open.

"Oh," says a soft-faced young woman with long, messy hair, who is on the other side, seated across from the door in a squashy-looking armchair with rolling wheels. Eli feels Maki peering over her shoulder to see the grimy, dusty inner hall. There are a few footprints in the layer of dirt, and the whole floor is illuminated in the darkness by the blaringly bright light from what looks like an entire wall of monitors before the woman. It smells like wet dog. "Did you knock?"

"Yes, we did," says Umi politely, and steps into the hall, towards the girl surrounded by technology with her badge in her hand. Eli follows, Dominator down but ready, with Maki standing guard at the door. The whole scenario feels, suddenly, glowing with suspicion.

"Are you-" Umi stows her badge after flashing it towards the chair's occupant and consults her wristcom, "-Toujou? The woman in charge of-"

"Yes, that's me," interrupts Toujou, and she's _smiling_ so intensely, Eli's grip tightens on her gun, and she points it subtly at Toujou's foot.

 **Target's criminal coefficient is 25. No action is required.** The gentle voice of the Dominator doesn't quite dispel Eli's twitch, but she relaxes and lets her arms loosen slightly. Toujou is fiddling with her skirt; it's a short thing in a pale, grass-green plaid. It matches her eyes. Umi is still talking.

"The dating website you've been operating isn't necessary for our society and undermines the authority of Sibyl's matchmaking system. Sibyl requires you to shut it down. For further notice, please refer to your provid- hck!" Umi makes an odd sound, a sort of strangled huff, and Eli whips around from where she'd been staring, fascinated, at the pulsating wall of screens, and sees Umi drop her Dominator and slide down the nearest wall by her palms, shaking, coughing, and ultimately disappearing in a roiling curtain of odd greenish smoke. Eli darts forward, and her foot hits a thin canister, still spurting the poison-green gas, and she kicks it into the larger room with a clang of metal on her iron-toed boots, and Toujou has vanished.

"NISHIKINO," snarls Eli, and rips off her jacket to cover her face. She gropes in the dust for Umi, and drags her partner out of the building through sheer fear, muscles twitching like an over-eager predator, and dumps Umi unceremoniously into Maki's astonished arms, snapping orders like the crash of teeth on stone. "Call the CID, order Enforcers, forensic drones, and inform Director Minami that our informal business call just went sour. Get Umi back to the van and do first-aid; I'm going to retrieve our gracious host."

The first-year Inspector doesn't even question the legitimacy or wisdom of this idea, just slings the shorter Umi over her back and half-piggybacks the woman down the few steps towards the stationary van through the now-storming rain.

Eli sprints through the apartment complex with her Dominator in one hand and her Holo activated on her wristcom, scanning each room quickly for life-forms before dashing to the next. Her running shoes squeak with every step, damp from the rain and picking up the film of dust that covers seemingly every surface of the complex. Why didn't her Dominator pick up Toujou? It must have been Toujou that deployed the gas canister, but her coefficient was ridiculously low. The only other explanation is another person in the complex – a latent criminal, now a full-blown criminal – and Eli has to protect the civilian. But first she'll have to locate her, an attempt that is proving challenging.

Everything in this building smells awful, a musty, guttural scent that makes Eli wrinkle her nose as she sprints and squeaks through the hallways, breathing evenly. There's a vague sense of panic as she realizes, too late, how dark it is. How she's surrounded by the pitch black, echoing into empty space. She slows her steps and comes to an eventual halt, just listening, holding back her old fears, things that have worn themselves into her mind as a child. Just as a child…

"Your Hue is getting a little cloudy," says someone, and Eli does not startle, just swings around and positions her Dominator solidly. It's Toujou, holding a boxy item in one hand close to her face, and her slim, purple-nailed fingers wrapped around another gas canister.

Toujou has lovely emerald eyes, which for all the world look like some sort of toned-down traffic light green; that can't be natural. But she smiles brightly with her sweet, round face, revealing dimples and a small gap in her admittedly large front teeth, and her whole face is brightened by the white glow of whatever electronic device she has in her hand. Eli's gaze slews down to that canister, where Toujou's thumb strokes languidly across the dull metal.

"Your Hue is a divine shade of blue," says Toujou, still fixated on her device. "But you seemed to be getting a little stressed a few seconds ago; it's clearing up, though. Isn't that nice; Sibyl won't throw you into rehabilitation therapy!" She smiles, all lovely cheer. She can't be more than twenty, twenty-two.

"Did you… did you gas my partner?" Eli has to ask, and readjusts her grip on her gun because it's getting a little sweaty. **Target's criminal coefficient is 19. No action is required.**

"Yes! I did that," confirms Toujou, and sways a little on the balls of her feet like an excited child. She's wearing ridiculously impractical little kitten heels, a glossy black with a sassy little strap going over the top of her foot. There's really pretty, but Eli is confused as to why she didn't hear them clicking, how Toujou snuck up on her, _why her Dominator isn't working_. "Don't worry about it, though. I found something really, really interesting." Toujou turns the thing in her hand to face Eli, and walks forward, ignoring the pointed gun, until she's hardly a few feet away, so Eli can read the screen.

 **Inspector Ayase Eli** the screen says, and it's somehow identified her and… Eli's eyes fly wide – the box is connected to Sibyl, somehow, it must be, because it's got her home address and her Hue color and all of her data is flying up and down the screen. She gets an eyeful of her blood type, and then Toujou whips the box back around and taps the surface a few times, humming in a nasally pitch that seems completely disconcerting coming from her pretty, pursed lips.

"What is that device? What in the he-"

"Look!" budges in Toujou, and Eli gets the box shoved in her face again. She lowers her gun, bemused. "This is how I made my matches on my website. I identified the people and brought in Sibyl's own matching program to calculate their compatibilities. Believe it or not, it's actually pretty good."

Eli bats the box out of her face and scans Toujou with the Dominator again, still watching the hand with the gas canister. It looks homemade. **Target's criminal coefficient is 29. No action is required.** "But you told them all the wrong advice. You matched up all of your consumers in pairings that went directly opposite Sibyl's readings!" Clearly Toujou had attacked Umi, but the Dominator says it isn't so. The Dominator is connected directly to Sibyl. What is going on?

"Yeah, well, I don't much like the Sibyl System dictating who should end up with whom – where's the fun in that? But that's not actually what I wanted to show you, Inspector Ayase. Here."

Eli has to look at the screen this time, instead of those wickedly bright eyes. **Ayase Eli and Toujou Nozomi: 95% match**.

Holy… this will be hard to explain to Division 9. "Wait just a second, what is-" and a resounding force whacks her across the head, she's falling, dizzy as the stars, the hiss of a gas canister, and then she's being propped up against a wall. Eli struggles to keep her eyes open, but the world is jumping around her, and she's coughing like mad when soft hands curl around her palms and force something into her grip. She tightens her fingers around a cube-like object and surrenders to the void.

"Ayase?"

"Eli!"

There's an awful clanging noise, like an old-fashioned cowbell reverberating about Eli's skull. Her vision blurs into focus slowly, like a calibrating camera lens, and she gets a close-up of Sonoda Umi's dusky face smeared in chalk-like streaks that must be the remnants of the gas.

Holding this observation close in hand, Eli tries to look around, but receives only a blinding strike of light to her face as someone – Maki's voice, low and commanding – waves the brightness across both of her dilated pupils. "Inspector, what happened? Did you find Toujou?"

"I found her, definitely," Eli manages, and puts a palm against her burning cheek. She regrets this quickly, as it's apparently been lying on the filthy ground, and she's just rubbed it on her skin. More pressing things come to mind. "My Dominator didn't work on her."

"What?" comes Umi's serious voice, and her face, pale with two spots of splotchy pink high on her cheekbones, swoops into view. Eli realizes she's barely in an upright sitting position, leaned against the narrow hallway wall, exposed slats of wood digging into her jacketless back.

"She took a swing at my head with another gas can, then deployed it on me," Eli explains, and forces herself to rise slowly, thighs complaining as she strings them into a compatible position for standing. Maki has one firm hand under Eli's armpit, guiding her superior into a vertical stance. "But the Dominator didn't even register her as paralysis-level."

Umi frowns, expression visible through the feeble morning streaks of light coming in through the damaged walls of the complex. "Is your gun functional?"

"Yes, perfectly. It just… didn't read her as a threat, seconds before she had a go at my head." Eli glances down, notices something in her hand, held so tightly her knuckles are sore.

Maki shifts uncomfortably. "Director Minami has called us back in. The forensics bots and Division 4 are here, since I reported in that our Senior Inspector was injured. We should ditch this place."

"You're right; let's go," Eli stumbles, catching her foot on the uneven floorboards, but ignores Maki's offered hand and Umi's tilted head.

"Eli, what have you got there?" gestures Umi as Eli ducks down to retrieve her Dominator. Eli glances at the screen of the tiny Sibyl scanner and flinches.

Director Minami is a juxtaposition. Her sharply creased suit and professional hairstyle clash with the motherly, caring look in her eyes, an expression she can't seem to keep out of her face even when she's reprimanding one of her Division leaders. Like right now.

"You should never have gone back in alone. You shouldn't have even engaged without Enforcers."

Eli stands as solidly as she can before her superior, refusing to cave her spine, knowing she's in the wrong, but facing her rebuke without blinking. The director's eyebrows crease, and Eli glances around the circular room in the silence, trying not to move her eyes. This high in the sky, the office's wall-wide windows throw open the whole cityscape, dazzling morning sunbeams painting the magnificent mahogany décor a warm gold. Eli can't see any slight wavering in the room's heavy Victorian era style, so she concludes that Minami's desk is in fact, authentic expensive furniture.

"Inspector Ayase," the director says, exasperated. "You made a mistake. This will result in extra paperwork for me to Chief Joshu, especially since Division 9 is the newest section of the CID." She peers over her thin navy frames to gaze at Eli, who fixes her director with the iciest, most serious expression she can project. This causes Minami to blink. "However, due to the described circumstances in your report, the chief has asked me to impart a certain delicate piece of information regarding Ms. Toujou Nozomi."

Eli sharpens her gaze, frustrated immediately at the mention of that Toujou girl. Who she's apparently almost perfectly matched to. She feels her whole body tighten, half panic and half eager to be let off her leash, to hunt down that criminal, tear after her, and bring her to justice. "Director Minami, I am listening."

 _Criminally asymptomatic._ Weird term. Eli stalks down the sleek halls of the Public Safety Bureau, shoes striking out a patter of irritation on the gridded tile. She scans her badge at the door marked "Division 9" in thick black lettering, and waits patiently as the metallic doors glide apart.

First she sees the blocky array of screens in the dim room, dancing with lines of green code and street cam images, and then she catches Enforcers Yazawa and Hoshizora tossing a very familiar bit of machinery between themselves, snorting capriciously.

"Nico, Rin," snaps Eli, and the shorter women stutter themselves into sobriety. Yazawa Nico, with her thin-boned face, scowls at the appearance of Eli, while lithe little Rin grins toothily. "Where's Analyst Koizumi?"

Rin bounces excitedly. "Hanayo is in the restroom! Eli, did you know this box is like, a knockoff Hue-scanner? It's connected to Sibyl but doesn't register on the system, that's what she said."

Nico shoves Rin, clearly using all of her strength, but the other Enforcer hardly rocks on her heels, still grinning widely up at Eli. "This dork used the Hue-scanner to compare her compatibility with everyone in the room."

"Yeah! I matched most with Hanayo, but like, Maki was a solid 60% too."

"She got embarrassed and left to freshen up," smirks Nico.

Eli frowns at both of them. "Don't play with the evidence. Rin, will you fetch Maki and Umi?"

Rin clambers over the back of the L-sofa and vanishes out the sliding door. Nico side-eyes Eli sullenly. "Why are you such a serious killjoy?"

Eli raises one eyebrow. "Enforcer Yazawa. You're out of line," she says warningly.

"Whatever," says Nico, and flicks a strand of her dark hair away from her pale face with knobbly hands. Eli rolls her eyes.

Inspectors Umi and Maki file into the Division 9 wing along with Enforcer Rin and Analyst Koizumi Hanayo. The latter is mousey in stride, with heavy-framed glasses that she has to shove up with her whole palm.

"Why is it always so dark in here?" grumbles Umi, and taps the environmental Holo control panel by the door, slowly opening the room to a level of brightness reminiscent of a surgical room. Eli chooses to ignore this, instead gesturing for the Division members to gather by the couch. Hanayo perches before the wall of monitors in her observing chair. Nico stretches out on the cushions of the couch, and Maki leans nonchalantly by Hanayo's desk, running her manicured fingertips over the loose papers.

"Division 9," Eli starts, "We've been issued a priority mission: capturing the criminally asymptomatic Toujou Nozomi _alive_."

"Criminally what-a-what?" Rin asks curiously.

"It's an old term," says Nico in a superior tone. "About one in two million civilians have brains so weird that Sibyl can't scan them cymatically." She pauses. "I didn't think they existed, really."

Umi leans forward, eyes narrowed. "If Sibyl can't scan them, that explains why the Dominator couldn't identify Toujou as a danger." Her fingers tap out a harsh rhythm on her thigh.

"We're not to go around bandying this sensitive information," Eli reminds them. "It's just our new primary goal. Remember – she must be alive."

"I wonder why they want this criminal alive," says Hanayo hesitantly. "Usually they don't mind when you guys Lethally Eliminate."

"Probably because the Dominator won't know what the coefficient is," Eli inserts, and crosses her arms. "She could be just a paralysis level, and salvageable to society through therapy." Privately, Eli thinks Toujou is ridiculously dangerous, but acting judge and jury is not her department.

A sharp crack sends Hanayo ducking to the ground. Umi's on her feet, expression fierce, but it's just Maki, red-faced as she scrambles on the floor to retrieve Toujou's illegal Hue-scanner device.

"Don't play with evidence!" says Eli once more, irritated, but Maki's face is so upset that Eli lets her off. "Everyone back to work. We're going to scan the street cams for Toujou's face and Psycho-Pass." Everyone disperses to individual scanning stations, each linked to the city interface. Eli glances at Maki, who seems rather cagey. Her blush has not faded, but Eli shakes her head and goes to her office door.

2.

Sonoda Umi is a second year Inspector who lost her original partner, Inspector Kousaka Honoka, to latent criminal tendencies. Eli knows this makes her twitchy, and more easily irritable in her attitude towards work. It makes her stern, almost as terse as Eli herself, and sometimes she is vaguely concerned about Umi's daily state.

As Senior Inspector, she keeps a close eye on her partner. Umi submerges herself in this case, going far below the slick water's surface. There may be a chance she will drown. She stares with a slate expression into the monitoring screens long after even careful Hanayo has zoned off, eyes glazed, and Rin is snoring deeply, curled into the plush carpet of the lab room like some overgrown housecat.

Eli waits another two weeks into their fruitless case before she makes her move. Rising lethargically, she stretches, reaching for the sealed skylights above, feeling the vertebrae along her spine crack like the defined _snick_ of the second hand. Maki, in the desk adjacent to Eli, desperately pretends she has not been playing hangman with Enforcer Yazawa by shoving the messy scrap of paper in her high combat boot and glaring determinedly at her street cam display where colorful sticks of people, not unlike her hangman, wander in and out of doorways in the shopping district. Nico yawns widely and spins in her chair, tapping her wristcom absently. It's hardly noon.

Eli slips away from her bored team and exits Division 9 headquarters, watching the eggshell clouds spill across the breadth of oceanic sky as she walks along the windows. Nozomi. An interesting name for a criminal.

She comes to Director Minami's office and knocks without hesitation. "One moment," says someone from inside, voice muffled through the heavy chamber door, and Eli crosses her arms patiently. A security drone rolls by while she stands, reddish siren rotating smoothly. She checks her messages on her wristcom, shifting her weight to her other hip, and the sloping sunlight continues its crawl along the carpet. A slow two minutes drain by when the door is pulled open.

"Senior Inspector Ayase," greets the short-haired, fierce-looking woman with one hand still on the knob. Her expression is taut with _something_ , fear, anger, displeasure? None of it is good for Hue, in any case, and Eli sidesteps the door casually.

"Good afternoon, Senior Inspector Kira," Eli says, and nods briefly to one of her own rank. "How is it going in Division 1?"

"Lovely, you know," says Kira Tsubasa, curious gaze roving over the hallway. She's very alert for someone simply exiting a meeting with the director. "I'm going to get a new partner soon, hopefully. It's unfortunate, the way there's only me and two Enforcers in my entire Division."

Eli widens her eyes slightly. "Only three in your whole Division?" Counting their Analyst, Division 9 has double Tsubasa's count.

Tsubasa looks uncomfortable now. "Well, we've got the largest district area to cover, but we're doing fine with it. The only problem is managing Crime Coefficients in junior Inspectors assigned to the busiest Division, you know? Our Analyst just went sour, so we need some more backup, stat."

"Feel free to visit Division 9 if necessary," urges Eli, who feels the slight tension between Divisions, but opts to ignore the sense of competition. They're all working for the same team, aren't they?

Tsubasa smiles at that. "Thanks, Ayase, that means a lot. You guys down in 9 are pretty alright." They salute each other and go their separate ways.

"Ayase Eli, how may I help you?" asks Director Minami as Eli approaches the familiar ornate desk. There's a new potted plant on the side. It looks like an oversized weed, but Eli ignores this and submits her request.

"I am concerned about the darkening Hue of Sonoda Umi."

The next day, Division 9's headquarter doors slide open and let in a blast of what seems, at first, to be heavenly light. Nico destroys this brief image by dimming the overhead Holo, and the six members of 9 squint in the sudden weak lighting at the new arrival.

"Hello, is this-" the newcomer checks a rumpled paper held tightly in smooth, long hands ( _Old fashioned,_ Eli thinks), "Division 9's pla- oof!"

Eli approaches the doors more cautiously than Umi, who has literally leapt upon the woman still in the way of the sliding doors. At second observation, they are hugging tightly rather than the Inspector keeping the guest in a chokehold, so Eli backs away quickly, not wanting to intrude on… whatever that is.

"Kotori!" says Umi with unusual excitement, so much excitement that Nico stares, dumbfounded, and Hanayo looks as she's been the one whacked with a gas canister, "what are you doing here?"

"You're Minami Kotori?" asks Eli politely, and the visitor, still holding onto Umi's arm with a sunny grin, turns slightly to face her.

"Yes, that's me," she says cheerfully, and her voice is cutesy but has a depth of sincerity Eli would not expect from first glance. "You must be Senior Inspector Ayase Eli?" Kotori curves around at the waist –she's so reedy, like a gray tree sapling, but so tall in the same way – without letting go of Umi, peering at the other members of Division 9. "I've been appointed as a sort of assistant to your Division."

"How so?" asks Eli, and has an awful awareness of how unnecessarily frosty her tone is, but can't think of a way to lessen the impact without looking stupid.

Kotori takes this attitude into stride without losing her smile. "I've been working as a therapist for Hue-threatened people in rehabilitation. The director of the CID worked with Sibyl and arranged this position for me."

"That's a weird sort of nepotism," says Maki in a scathing aside to Rin, who snorts at her desk and knocks over a bobble head tiger. "Besides, why do we need a Hue-cleaner?" Eli gives them both a rather icy side-eye as they reclaim the tiger, resulting in some very sudden interest in the monitoring screens.

"I've been very good friends with Kotori since childhood," explains Umi now that she's calmed down slightly. "Us two and Honoka ran around together at all hours." Her eyes darken, and Kotori rubs her back comfortingly.

"Don't worry Umi! I've been talking to Honoka a lot in the facilities, and there's a pretty good chance she'll be added to the Enforcer ranks! Maybe she can work with you again!"

"Well, if that's the director's plan," says Eli in a final sort of tone, slightly mollified. "I'll contact some drones and see if I can't get a station set up for you, Minami Kotori. Any preference to the Holo design?"

"Oh, please, call me Kotori," says the newest member of Division 9. "And, um, I'm pretty indecisive, so maybe anything will do." As Eli walks out of headquarters to place her order, the rest of the Division returns to street scanning. Umi drags Kotori to the couch, and the doors slide closed over their energetic chatter.

Hardly a week later: "Kotori's not bad at all," says Maki, a little taken aback. "I've never met someone so genuinely nice. It hardly seems real."

Even Eli can't help smiling. "Maybe we've been too serious all this time." The van hits a bump, sending Maki flying into Eli's space by accident. Eli, who has been bracing herself on the seatbelt with one hand, hardly moves.

"Whoops, sorry. Anyway, I can't believe you just said that _you're_ too serious, haha." Eli rolls her eyes, but allows it. "And Eli? I really think Kotori has caused a general increase in Hue color at HQ. Mine has never been a lighter shade of red…"

"Maybe you're just enjoying your new job," suggests Eli, and Maki purses her lips.

It's been much too long since they've been on a case. While no crime is an ideal scenario, searching for Toujou has so far, proved useless. Lately, Eli's been thinking the asymptomatic is more of a serious techno-wizard interested in messing around than an awful terrorist threat, but orders are orders, and Chief Joshu has sent down strict ones for Toujou's capture. Either way, Eli's division has been cleared for normal duties as well as hunting down Toujou, so here she is with first-year Maki en route to their latest case, down a bumpy avenue packed with so many automobiles that the auto-pilot is having trouble routing them.

"This is a pretty busy area," says Maki, glancing out the tinted windows, one hand twirling a strand of crimson hair madly. "How will we find the criminal among the civilians?"

"Target is Noribu Kaiba, male, thirty five with mid-length black hair. He's just murdered a couple out of some sort of jealous rage. His Criminal Coefficient will be unbearably high." Eli glances out the window at their sluggish progress through the traffic, and hits the emergency button. Sirens begin to blare from their hovercar while thick scarlet halogen lines illuminate the shell, running down the sides of the car like ancient runes, prompting all the other vehicles' auto-pilots to clear a path. She glances at Maki. "This will definitely be a Lethal Elimination. After murder, Coefficients do not recover." The first-year looks a bit green and spins her strand of hair a little faster. "Put your hair up, Inspector Nishikino. We'll need to look professional."

The van shudders to a halt outside an unobtrusive-looking residential block in the north side. Eli slams her car door, prompting the gathering crowd outside to disperse slightly, a few running away down the dusky streets. All the houses look the same on the outside, save for a few decorations on some of the outer doors, but Maki immediately moves toward the abode with a shattered window and sets up some Holos. **Police line, do not cross.** Some of the gathered civilians are waving their arms at Maki; Eli nods, and the first year moves among them to receive information as the Enforcer's van screeches into the street.

Eli doesn't bother waiting for her division to fully (and in Nico's case, dramatically) materialize from the prison-like interior of the van, instead sticking her hand out for the holder to thrust her Dominator at her.

It feels odd, holding the gun again since Toujou, like touching the hand of a traitorous friend. But Eli listens all the same to the silky voice of the operating system booting up, purring in her hand. She turns to see Umi and Rin with the tell-tale flash of ice blue in their irises, Dominators in practiced, loose-but-ready grips. Eli runs her fingers over her tight, high ponytail to ensure it won't get in the way as Maki and Nico come towards the dispenser, mouths pulled into grim lines.

"What is it?" asks Umi at once. Rin tilts her head, and Eli braces herself for bad news.

Nico throws a thumb over her shoulder at the townhouse next to the crime scene. "Our target's gotten hold of the neighbor lady. The civilians think he's going to use her for leverage on us."

Everyone glances at the next-door house. It's one of the several with an independent decorating style. Eli squints at it through the descending night and thinks she might be making out a neon orange eyeball, complete with incredibly long lashes by proportion.

"Hey," says Rin slowly. "I recognize that logo. It's that entertainer, that one that goes on the TV and does fortunes, what's-her-name…"

"Oh yeah, that old bat," says Maki, as the blue light clears from her irises and she hefts her weapon at the crime scene house. "Tarot isn't _real_."

"So we know we have a hostage," interrupts Eli. "Priorities: reclaim victim, eliminate target. In that order; I don't want any waste of life tonight. Everyone's communicator on?" A circle of nodding women. "Bibi unit, with me. We'll be handling objective two. Lily White, take objective one around the back entrance. Everyone understand?" More nods. "Let's go."

Civilians are not permitted weapons; the blanket ban on firearms long ago took care of that problem, but knives are still deadly items. Eli kneels at the end of the walkway to the front door with her Dominator straight out. Through the lit window, she can see splashes of garish crimson on the panes, dark against the glass. The chill of the cement bleeds through her thin legwear, making her wish she'd thrown on something more substantial. The wind blows against her hair, tossing irritating slivers of sunlight-gold in her eyes. She doesn't move her gaze from the house. "Lily White One, where are you?"

"Lily Two opened an entrance through a regrettably ajar window, Bibi One. We are both inside the kitchen; there's a lot of blood in here, but no bodies."

"This is Lily Two. I hear a woman sobbing. Seems to be upstairs."

"Nobody in the second-story windows," Nico's voice comes through the communicator. "Nobody watching."

Maki says, "Two heat signatures on the second floor," at the same time.

"Alright," says Eli clearly into her wristcom. "We're going in."

The front door is unlocked and opens straightaway into a small foyer with pretty, bone-white tiles. They're speckled in fresh red dots; apparently someone went through here bleeding. To Eli's immediate left is the kitchen – it extends all the way to the back of the house. Umi is standing guard, Dominator at the ready. Eli sneaks a glance at the window in the living room to her right. It's absolutely splattered. Right underneath the sill is a gutted form. Eli averts her eyes while Rin and Nico materialize, and everyone but Maki is standing at the foot of the stairs, back to the body.

"Enforcers, be careful," instructs Eli, and Rin and Nico raise their Dominators and charge, taking the steps two at a time, Umi on their heels. Maki's voice whispers into the communicator: "Five heat signatures on the second floor."

Eli reaches the top in record time and whirls around. The second story is one circular room with mint-colored walls. It's got piles and piles of novels – hardcover and paperback and what looks like an entire quarter of the wall devoted to manga – and on the far south side is the target, already engaged with Rin and Nico. Umi's dragging the hostage, a crinkly sort of old lady who seems plenty scared but not obviously injured, towards the stairs.

Eli can see why Rin and Nico are having a hard time with the target. He's larger than both of them combined, for one, and while Nico has excellent aim, and Rin has unbelievable speed and stamina, in the few seconds it takes for the Dominators to boot up into Lethal mode, the target is swinging a silver candelabra in one hand, and a two-foot machete blade in the other. There's not enough room up here to dodge a decapitating slice and aim a gun that takes a whole three seconds to shoot.

Eli listens carefully to her Dominator. **Target's Criminal Coefficient is 230. Aim carefully and eliminate the target**. Her Dominator begins to buzz in her hands, fractions of the metal coating clicking, unlocking, elongating as the blue lines flash down the sides. She can't aim with Nico and Rin so close, but the new blink of lights makes the target look askew in her direction reflexively.

The target realizes his mistake quickly enough, slashing wildly with a low bellow at Rin's attempt to settle and aim, and though Rin's fast enough to dip aside, he changes his swing and catches her on the arm with the machete. Rin lets out a screech and kicks him in the solar plexus as she rolls out of the way, blood spraying from her upper arm, and Nico shoves her charged Dominator up against the target's exposed back as he moves to chase Rin, and Enforcer pulls the trigger.

It always happens like this. Eli sees the microwave pulse – that stunning electric blue (for some reason, her mind throws an image of Toujou Nozomi at her; " _a divine shade of blue"_ ) – enter the target's spine. His skin swells grotesquely at the contact point, Nico is backpedalling rapidly, the target's body fluids are boiling inside his own skin, bursting – and then there's just a sickening pile of gore in the library. It smells, well, like a sickening pile of gore, and Eli's stomach is strong, but it's not attractive.

Sonoda leads the hostage out carefully, so as to not raise her stress level, and the Enforcers pile into the van to visit the CID hospital. They were in range of the target during Nico's fatal hit; they both look like they've been hit with a gallon of thick maroon paint. "Don't worry about me, Eli," says Rin with clenched teeth as Maki binds her arm. "It's just a scratch, really."

Eli bites her lip. "I'm sorry this happened, Rin." A half a block down, Umi gets into a car with the hostage to drive her to MWPSB-licensed therapy.

"No, it's okay. It's what I'm made for," Rin says, and turns her head to face the window. Maki has already set the clean-up and forensics drones to work, but since she's accompanying Rin to the hospital, Eli is left to do report. Nico, of course, may not leave PSB premises unless it's for an Enforcing mission. Eli watches her Enforcers and Maki drive off, lights flashing.

The drones will do most of the forensics from the original murders, so Eli holsters her Dominator in her waistband and sets off for the neighbor's house to get notes on the abduction for her report. Before she enters, she leans the broken-down door back on its hinges neatly. It sags awkwardly before sliding down slightly. Giving up, Eli activates her wristcom to record and walks in.

This townhouse is arranged exactly like the one next door. She takes a left and strolls the length of the kitchen, decorated in pre-Christmas décor. Eli's foot almost catches in a branch of evergreens splayed across the floor, which she puts down to general messiness rather than a result of a struggle in the house. "Notes: Victim's house was broken into by way of the front door, very direct. A large force was used to smash the locking mechanism and the scanner was disabled as the hinges were crushed." Eli wanders back past the foyer, into the living room, where she receives a horrible shock to see Toujou Nozomi kneeling over the lowest drawer in a file cabinet, rifling through the papers as bold as you please.

Toujou straightens at once, smoothing her skirt over her knees. "Good evening, Ayase Eli," she says cheerily, and depresses the button of yet another little handheld device. Eli is only marginally horrified to see her wristcom and the room's internal Holos slowly power down. She doesn't even bother checking her emergency GPS, knowing she'll find it dead as well.

"I find the art of fortune-telling absolutely fascinating, don't you?" asks Toujou conversationally, as though she hasn't just technologically grounded Eli into subservience. "This lady's things are pretty show business-styled, though. I guess I was hoping for more of a connection to the arcane, spiritual power of it all?" Toujou seems to notice Eli's rabbit-ready stance, the locked knees and clenched fists. "Oh, you probably don't know much about that. It's kind of old-timey now, especially with all of our advances. But it's still interesting to learn about! I bet I'd be good at this sort of thing, if there were any real information left on it. Sibyl's probably demolished a lot of the old ways."

"What did you do to my wristcom?" snarls Eli, forcing the words out between her grinding teeth. Toujou beams, round face lighting up with those damned dimples. She's adorable. She's mad.

"It's a pulse-dimmer. I designed this one myself. The radius isn't that large, but it's excellent for ensuring truly private conversations." Toujou tilts her head; puts her hands behind her back like a fifteen-year-old flirting awfully, tactlessly. "Ayase Eli, are you mad at me?"

Eli is torn between putting her non-functioning Dominator to her own head for the drama, and doing her best to punch Toujou. She does neither, instead pinching the bridge of her nose with two fingers and scowling. "I don't know why you… I don't know why you've got this fascination with me. I'm supposed to capture you."

"It's because I think you're a beautiful person," says Toujou simply. "You're so cold, but I think you're bored. Or lonely. You seem a bit overworked. I could help you relax." She smiles like a girl with a secret after her miniature speech, and Eli is so shocked, _she_ might have been zapped with the paralyzer.

"Well, I'd better get going. Your division is going to wonder why you dropped off their trackable map… until next time, Ayase Eli!" Toujou sidles out from the room, leaving Eli traumatized, until she hears: "And there _will_ be a next time!"

That doesn't help at all.


	2. Chapter 2

"Why didn't you apprehend her?" Umi demands, and she actually grabs two fistfuls of her own silky dark hair in frustration. Thin creases appear at the top of her forehead – she's not that old, but she's stressed – and Kotori touches her back with a concerned look.

Eli takes a deep breath and resists the urge to check her own hair – it's fine, she's just nervous, too – and takes a seat on the couch in the open space next to Rin, who immediately pats her shoulder in a comforting way, calloused hands beating a too-hard rhythm on Eli's bony scapula. "Umi, you know why. To Eliminate with the Dominator is to kill with Sibyl's permission – violent action on my own autonomy would raise my Criminal Coefficient. My hands were tied."

A stormcloud crosses Umi's face again, and she takes a seat on Eli's other side with what sounds like a very uncomfortable plop. "We can't have you going down to Enforcer rank." Nico sticks her tongue out in offense, but Rin twists her little mouth sympathetically. "You're the best Inspector the CID's got."

Maki, pacing tight circles around the couch, throws her hands up in bewilderment and changes the subject with the subtly of a charging antelope. "Division 9 has the brains and the brawn, but why can't we do something as easy as find Toujou?"

"It's not always easy," Hanayo says complacently, and swings around in her swivel chair, eyes blazing. "I think the data we have on her might be a little old. Eli, will you verify this image of Toujou? It's from her last routine Psycho-Pass check, two years ago."

Eli steps up to the largest screen among the wall and gazes at the four-foot tall picture. "It's close. Her hair is much longer. She's got a rounder face, here and here," Eli gestures weakly.

"Maybe you should do a Mind-Scoop, so we have the most recent and accurate data," says Hanayo, typing rapidly on the Holo-keyboard with scuttering noises like a hailstorm, voice commanding now that she's in her element.

Eli finds herself too fixated on the face watching her from the main monitor; with a mental shake, she clears her focus and prepares herself for the Scoop.

"Wow, she's so pretty," says Kotori in a hushed voice as Eli sits up blearily. Maki has one arm in a professional, supportive grip, and Nico is sort of tugging on the other sleeve half-heartedly as they lever her from her flat-backed position on the slab, which unfortunately resembles an operation table. The medical aspect of it is not lost on Eli, who blinks and eyes it warily. But it's over now.

Analyst Hanayo is peppering her keyboard furiously. It sounds like a flock of chickens pecking. It doesn't much help Eli's headache, but she forces herself to observe the new image of Toujou on the projection wall.

Those shining eyeballs stand out at once, ludicrously bright in the picture, like an impossible anime character – Eli flushes as Hanayo comments, "You might have been thinking about the eyes more than anything else; normally they wouldn't glow like that," – but if one gazed past, they'd see Nozomi's little nose, the half-smirk of an escape artist, the striking cleverness in her circular face…

"Yes, it's certainly a different look than the one on her Pass," says Umi, peering so close to the projector, part of Nozomi's chin is shadowed by the Inspector's inky hair. It makes it appear as though the target is missing a deeply necessary section of her face. The resulting smudge is not attractive. "But recognizable as Toujou. So how is she still hiding? Her Pass hasn't been picked up by a street scanner in months, and her facial characteristics aren't so different that monitors wouldn't be able to isolate the underlying bones and alert us to the results."

"I believe that Toujou's evasion of surveillance means that our criminal is using someone else's Psycho-Pass; probably a deceased. Also, she's probably been disguising herself with Holo-technology whenever she goes out," explains Hanayo gracefully.

"Yes, Toujou is very adept with technology," comments Eli, still looking at the projection. Nico crosses her arms and raises an eyebrow.

"How do you know?"

Statements of denial and innocence are the first things that shoot across the blank space of Eli's panicked mind, and then she remembers her division hasn't read the reports to the director, and so they do not know that Toujou Nozomi has been shamelessly hitting on Eli through technology for most of their interactions. Eli pretends to scratch her ankle, providing cover for her eyes while she replies. "Well, she has a homemade Hue-scanner that she connected to Sibyl's network without detection. Beyond that, she was managing her own website, and apparently designed a localized pulse-dimmer."

"It makes sense, Nico. You don't need to sound so aggressive about it," reprimands Maki haughtily.

"Calm down, Princess," shoots back Nico, and they begin squabbling with riotous energy that Eli quite honestly does not have.

"Oh, to be young," says Kotori cheekily, glancing between Inspector Nishikino and Enforcer Yazawa, who both twist towards the therapist with scorching glares.

"I'm _older than you_ ," Nico hisses.

"So how do we find Toujou if we can't get her Psycho-Pass or track her by visuals?" Umi asks, bringing the conversation back on topic by slamming her hands on Eli's operating table. Everyone but Rin jumps.

"Let's start by giving her Hue-scanner to the hunting dog drones. Maybe they can get some forensic data off of it, though I bet she's smart enough to have thought of that, too," says Eli, a little bitterly.

Rin gives Eli a loose-lipped, anticipative grin. It's a disconcerting combination of a child on Christmas morning and a wolf spotting injured prey. "Don't worry about it, Eli. Nobody can stay hidden forever."

Over the holidays, Eli leaves Inspector Nishikino and Enforcer Yazawa in charge of Division 9, still grumbling at each other, and visits her family, who live in a cushy complex in the Northern section of the city.

She takes a deep breath before she knocks.

"Happy holidays!" says the automated door knocker loudly, and Eli almost jumps off the stoop into the thin layer of slushy snow, fingers twitching at her waist for a Dominator she doesn't have. She feels like an idiot when she's not wearing her Inspector's jacket, and tries to pretend she's unbothered by scanning the surrounding area, breathing out swirls of icy fog in time to the droning of the passing cars. She's watching the flow of traffic, so she almost misses the door opening.

"Hi Eli! Welcome back!" says the woman in the doorway, and she grasps Eli around the neck with both arms and squeezes tightly.

Despite being a respectable twenty-year-old adult, Alisa bounces around Eli as they walk in, the winter chill brushing their exposed legs while the blustering heat from the oven inside blasts them in the face. Eli tries to shuffle part of her dress's skirt out of her path, and ends up half-tripping her younger sister. "Eli's hooome," calls Alisa, recovering with the leisurely grace of a dancer.

"Don't yell so much," says Eli, but feels her face split into a grin anyway. Alisa leads Eli into the spacious living room draped in evergreen Holo themes, where Mother is reclined by a large table.

"Good evening, Elichika," says Mother with a tilt of her head, sandy hair spilling back along the lean span of her shoulders. She sets her digital reader aside and stands elegantly, expectantly. "How have you been? You hardly visit!"

"Work has kept me busy," confesses Eli, who is having an uncomfortable vision as she looks at her mother – will Eli be like this someday? Motherly, hair down, relaxed, comfortable with the crow's eyes and the art classes – and tries to make her posture less aggressive. She's _home,_ she's safe, and she needs to calm down some. Alisa punches her in the back and snickers gleefully.

"I'm a criminal Eli, haha, I got you."

"So how's your love life, Eli?" Alisa inquires casually, weaving her arm through the dishes to reach the peas. Mother raps her on the knuckles with a spoon and passes her the serving plate, where Alisa dumps a solid half of the pods onto her chicken, then meekly holds them out to her sister. Eli blinks and accepts the peas.

"You know I've been too busy to go through a matching process. Plus it's usually not encouraged for Inspectors to have significant others in the CID."

"That's completely alright," says Mother, and picks at her chicken evenly. "You're still too young for a husband anyway."

"Mom, you know Sibyl has marked me as homosexual," says Eli softly. Alisa's eyes brighten with a ferocious heat.

"Don't be archaic, Mom," she says. "Nobody can help their cymatics. Besides, it's been like, over a hundred years since it was illegal."

Mother gestures at Alisa to restrain herself and smiles indulgently. "I didn't mean anything by it. I'm sorry, Eli."

"It's alright," says Eli, now mortified. "Besides, the last person I was recently matched with was a criminal, so that doesn't quite inspire me to settle down."

" _What_?"

Whoops. At this moment, Eli's wristcom starts beeping from the other room. Thank goodness. She stands in a smooth moment and trips over the hem of her dress, grabbing the ridged edge of the table for balance. Pretending she's fine, Eli hurries out the entryway and taps the fine surface of her com. The angles of Nishikino Maki's pallid face glow in the darkness. "Good evening, Eli. Sorry to disturb you."

"It's really no problem," says Eli, and glances back in the dining room to see her family peering around the corner.

"Oh, cool." A pause. Eli squints at her junior, waiting for the news. From in the background, she hears someone that sounds suspiciously like Enforcer Yazawa and the sound of a Dominator blast.

" _Just tell her to get over here!_ " Another vague echo of an explosion.

"Right! Senior Inspector, there's an in-progress armed robbery, ten, maybe eleven culprits, it's of a small shopping center in the Northeastern district. I can send you the coordinates if you are available; Inspector Sonoda lives too far away to possibly make it in time-"

"Get over here, Eli!" yells Nico in the background again, and the distinct sound of Rin whooping crosses the communicator, blurring Maki's heavy side-eye.

"I'll be about five minutes," promises Eli, already programming her car and wardrobe Holo. To her family: "I'll be about an hour."

Maki sounds harried as Eli speeds down the now-vacant motorways towards the mall. "Somebody cut all power sources to the security system and the drones, somehow. There are about twenty people in there now, just looting and generally being tiresome."

There's a sensation like rocks mashing in her stomach, and Eli sighs. "I feel like I know who's behind this. And I'm honestly not surprised."

When she screeches to a halt outside the sprawling complex, she finds Maki, Rin and Nico standing expectantly beside the police van, Dominators in hand. It's snowing softly, poetically. It's the complete opposite of the sounds of smashing glass and the occasional hoot from inside. "And it's the holidays, too," says Rin mournfully.

"The idiots inside the mall don't seem to realize their sacrificing their Psycho-Passes," sniffs Nico.

"Well, the scanners within a mile radius are all down, too, according to Hanayo," says Maki, irritation in her tone. "They have plenty of time to book it home with their stolen goods and try some self-therapy to bring down those Criminal Coefficients."

"Don't worry," says Eli, and scrunches her eyes at the flicker of the Dominator's operating system as she takes her gun. "We'll round them all up eventually. But I think we'll need backup for this scale. Have you tried Division 1?"

Inspector Kira Tsubasa and her two Enforcers, Toudou Erena and Yuuki Anju, are brutally efficient. Not one looter in the winding storefront hallways escapes the notice of Erena and Anju, who move forward in tandem like two jerky partitions of puppets on the same string. They have the hard look of professionals and the swift cruelty of bone-deep criminals. Eli stands a little ways back with her Dominator prepped at her waistline, and watches Rin and Nico maneuver around Erena as she disposes of a grubby, knife-wielding looter with a backhand that sends him flying. Eli can hear the crunch from back here. She observes with a carefully blank mind as Anju, several feet away, Paralyzes her victim at a point-blank range.

Maki's got her mouth in a prim line, but her eyes are wide as she struggles not to be impressed by Division 1. They're pretty good. As a cumulative unit, both Divisions slowly make their way up the main commons of the mall, Tsubasa in the lead, with Nico and Rin dragging the Paralyzed looters back toward the police van.

It's a fairly easy work, especially with D1 at hand, and it's almost done when Eli looks around when she hears the telltale whirring of a Dominator advancing into Lethal Elimination mode. Several stores down, Toudou Erena is inching towards a criminal with both hands full of some sort of chrome equipment exiting a tech store. They're facing off, rounding the security bars with the easy, languid grace of predators circling. For some reason, Erena isn't firing as she stalks forward, following the man in her sights with Dominator primed. She backs him around a corner and disappears from view.

Almost casually, Kira drifts back towards her Enforcer, shadows from the looming mall skylights striping her face midnight blue. Eli takes a half-step after the Division 1 Senior Inspector, but Kira waves her hand out, not even looking back. "Go on," she says, gaze icy. "Anju, with me." Division 9 watches Division 1 sweep away.

"I don't see any looters in this area. We might have cleared them all out, but we should check each store individually," says Eli wearily. Holiday dinners have never been so exciting.

"Is that… Toujou?" asks Nico, blinking through the dark storefronts. Everyone squints in that direction, and Eli can barely make out a swish of rippling dark hair through the murky glass windows of _Eye of Horus: Metaphysical and Tarot_.

"Just in case it is, does everyone have their batons and torpor guns?" Maki reminds the Enforcers, patting her own waist with a sort of overly-prepared pride.

A jolt like the winter wind slices through Eli as she clenches her hands tighter around the hilt of her Dominator. Toujou is _here_. Of course she is.

She's careful to position Nico and Rin in front of Maki as they approach the tarot store. Nozomi is dangerous. Eli's watching Nico ooze around the shattered glass by a crystal ball stand by the checkout when she remembers Toujou complaining about the lack of fortune-telling in the modern days – is it a coincidence that this is the only psychic shop in the north district?

"Inspector Ayase, did you bring in troops?" Nozomi is indeed in The Eye of Horus. She rounds the corner of a display shelf with a thick deck of narrow cards in her slim hand and blinks at the array of Division 9 members, each with guns up and eyes narrowed. "I wasn't expecting guests, so much." Her face splits into a faintly amused smirk.

"You've caused enough trouble for us," Eli says, bolder than she feels. She has a distinct sense that Nico is giving her a sideways glance, and so she pulls the trigger on her tranquilizer gun.

It's a harmless sedation capsule in the pointed missile. Sibyl, working around the Dominator epiphany, has authorized these antiquated weapons. Nozomi seems to understand what's happening, though, and ducks into the nearest aisle. Eli's bullet hits a book and lodges a few centimeters into the block of pages.

"Oh man, Eli, you're going to have to do better than that," says Toujou's voice from somewhere among the dark shelves, and Eli's blood boils.

"Did that asymptomatic criminal just use your name informally?" asks Rin.

"Focus! Spread out in two groups. Maki, with me. Rin, guard the door. _Take her down_ ," says Eli, doing her best to ignore this question. Sparks erupt from her right as Maki's shot capsule bounces off something metallic and arches into a light fixture.

Eli stalks through the labyrinth of shelves. Colored crystals, thick tomes and strangely proportioned images of old gods are illuminated by her Holo-light as she pads into the looming aisles, Maki at her back. She hears Nico curse and a patter of shots.

"I found her!" says Rin's voice into the tense silence, and then: " _She took my gun!"_ Eli's halfway through turning back – Rin's unarmed, Rin needs help – and then there's the recognizable clicking of a Dominator powering up and a tremendous, electric blue blast rips a hole through five shelves in a row. Eli holds Maki back; blinks through the ragged gap a few feet ahead and sees Rin holding her Dominator, looking awfully surprised.

There's no time to explain, as Nico lets out a shriek from the front door, and the other three members of Division 9 swirl around at once and pound their way up towards the entrance. They find Nico handcuffed to the handle of a heavy chest of drawers, arm bent at a horrible angle, gun scittered across the smooth tile. She's breathing shallowly. Maki dives down to take her pulse. Nico is talking rapidly, shortly. "She came out from the left side – I shot at her a few times, but they all missed. She punched me in the stomach and bent my arm back, so far. Then she handcuffed me here and threw the key."

Eli, numb, sees the key to the cuffs laying on a piece of paper innocuously, below a still-swinging hanging environment Holo. While she retrieves it, she notices the slip of paper is a card. She sticks it in her pocket unthinkingly.

Nico is still explaining as Eli unlocks her. "I think I got her in the ankle or something. These bullets bounce a lot."

"We've got to get you to the CID hospital," says Maki, and actually hefts the smaller woman into her arms in a weird version of the bridal carry. "We also need to catch up with Division 1."

"Take her," says Eli. "Rin, let's find Inspector Kira." She can't bear to see Nico's pale face as her arm is jostled.

"What happened with your Dominator?" asks Eli quietly as Rin leans against the police van and slots her weapons into the dispensers gloomily. Division 1 waves as they roar away in their own vehicle, stuffed with unconscious latent criminals. It's a little past midnight. The stars are dim. Eli could just scream; they failed to capture Toujou _again_. Nico's hurt. And something went wrong with the Dominators…

"I don't know," says Rin in a rare subdued tone. "Toujou came up behind and just yanked my sedation gun out of my hands, easy as pie. I yelled – you heard that, right? – and I was so _scared_ , she's a criminal, she could have killed me, so I pulled out my Dominator from my waist holster. I pointed it at her and, um," Rin pauses, and Eli touches her shoulder, comfortingly, heated inside. "It said 'no action required,' but then it charged into Elimination Mode. And I shot."

Eli creases her eyebrows. "It shot Lethally at Toujou? What was her Coefficient?" The guns are directly linked to Sibyl. Nozomi can't be read…

"A perfect 0. I don't understand," says Rin lethargically, and scuffs her combat boot in the gravel by the van's tire. Eli recalls how young Rin is; decides at once it is not a good time to interrogate her Enforcer. In an attempt to not let her frustration show, Eli gives Rin a brief hug. The shorter woman hesitates, then small, strong arms grasp Eli's waist.

"Go back to the CID. I'll see you in a few days," says Eli. "Hanayo's back at base. Nico will be alright. Umi will be back. Everything will be just fine."

"Thanks, Senior Inspector Ayase," whispers Rin, and Eli remembers, uncomfortably, that Rin has been a latent criminal since she was four.

Eli rustles her badge at her car, and the sleek door rises to allow her entry at once. With a sigh she feels rumble in her chest, she presses her back into her padded seat and closes her eyes. It's so late. Her family will be so… disappointed? Relieved? Uncaring? Whatever. She buckles in and says, exhausted, "Take me home." The car sets off without a lurch, and Eli squints dully at the myriad twinkles of the city's nightlife through the tinted panes, mind blissfully blank.

"Hi Eli."

"What the-" Eli jerks up and perceives in the rearview mirror, belatedly, the blurred form of Toujou splayed in the backseat. Toujou's hair is everywhere, strands and swirls of night in an inky mess all over the padding. Her neat skirt is sort of tangled around her long legs; she scrapes her face with hands that have a slight tremor to them. She looks a little fuzzy, eyes narrowed, peeking groggily up at Eli.

"How did you-" She should call into headquarters. Eli whips around and mashes the com button on her dashboard. "Inspector Ayase to CID headquarters, this is-"

"No point," breathes Toujou, and of course her com lines are cut. Eli tries her autopilot next. The destination coordinates are locked onto what appears to be the parking lot of a warehouse, abandoned since the old days. _Shit_. The doors won't open.

Eli starts sputtering a little, blinking rapidly, and Nozomi laughs, but faintly. Eli doesn't care, but she has to ask anyway, "Are you injured, Toujou?" Her eyes move over the criminal, who looks thoroughly disheveled. Well, Nozomi's had a busy day of enabling robberies and breaking Enforcer Yazawa's arm. But beyond that, she looks… "Nico got you with one of the tranquilizers, didn't she?"

Nozomi yawns and makes a lazy gesture, sliding farther down in her slump. "Hardly a nick. But it's enough to really," another yawn, "discourage movement."

Eli faces the front and fumes. She's got a mostly-drugged and perfectly apprehendable Toujou in the backseat of her highjacked, locked car miles away from the CID and her own home. The situation could probably be worse, but she's having trouble thinking of possibilities. The car arrives at the coordinates of the abandoned lot, and just to annoy Eli, sweeps in a slow and stately manner into a neat park within the lines.

"You can call me Nozomi, since we're going to be married someday," says the cybercriminal, far too cheekily for someone who's in no position to tease Eli.

"If you're planning to kill me, that will really ruin your upcoming nuptials," shoots Eli, rigid in her seat with annoyance. She's breathing like she's been out running – she's got to calm down, lower her stress level. She hasn't lost her cool in so long, but Nozomi is _annoying_.

"I'd never kill anyone!" says Nozomi, what sounds like actual shock bleeding into her dazed voice. "I'm not a bad person; that's awful!"

"I'm not your judge," Eli grits out, lips barely moving. She's watching Nozomi's easy, muddled face in the rearview mirror. She's so vulnerable, expressive. Alive. "Sibyl will deal with you when I turn you in."

Nozomi is gnawing on her bottom lip. How juvenile. "If you give me to Sibyl… they'll kill me, Eli. For sure."

"Your past crimes don't really support your whining now." Eli's eyes are still glued to her mirror.

There's a pause. Why are they even sitting here in the gloomy, snowy darkness, if Nozomi's not going to kill Eli, if Eli can't turn her in? The only sound is the labored inhales of the partially-sedated Nozomi, the placid hum of the still-active, hacked auto-car. It's blowing gentle, warm air through the vents. It feels like sitting in front of a sweetly crackling fire. Eli refuses to be lulled into a peaceful mood and bites the inside of her cheek to force herself to stay awake and angry.

"So," says Nozomi awkwardly, "how are your holidays going?" Eli can't believe this is happening. She should reach back there and clock the asymptomatic on the head. She should hammer the bulletproof glass with her bare hands until it gives way, and then crawl out over the shards and sprint for home, arms over her head like the sky is falling. She should take a deep breath and yell until her vocal chords blow out and she never has to speak again. She should… answer the question.

"Well," she says tersely, "I was dragged out of my family dinner to deal with a widespread robbery orchestrated by _someone_." She doesn't mention that they didn't even get to share gifts.

Nozomi ignores the clear blame and says, interestedly, "What is your family like?"

"Why do you care?" Eli's gaze has been hauled inexorably back to her rearview mirror, where Nozomi is yanking herself up into a more upright position with a grimace.

"I'm not leaving this car until the sedatives are fully out of my system," she says primly. "According to my mental math, that might not be for a few hours."

"Are you _serious?_ " hisses Eli. " _Hours_?"

"Yep."

"Oh my-" Eli slumps into her seat and glowers out the windshield. She can barely just see the dark outline of the warehouse across the empty lot. It's very rectangular. Not very interesting. She finally accepts she won't be able to stare at it for hours, and takes a centering breath. "My family is great. I love them a lot. But sometimes they're. You know." Why is she saying this? "They have a problem. With me. My career choice, and my cymatics."

"They think you're too serious?" guesses Nozomi.

"That I work too hard. Which I don't!"

"I think you do," says Nozomi.

"Whatever," dismisses Eli. "It's where I was placed. And being a high-ranking Inspector works with me, just like Sibyl said it would. I'm even-headed enough; I'm a leader. It pays well, and if I have to come off cold and severe, then it's just in the name of duty. It's my job to protect people. I'd hate just… sitting around."

"What's the hardest part of being an Inspector?" Nozomi inserts casually.

"Besides the fact that I have to watch my Coefficient the way normal people check the time?" Eli muses, and then considers the question more deeply. She hesitates, and Nozomi sighs. It's like the soft blur of wind through a stark alleyway, and it reminds Eli of something. "I used to be afraid of the dark."

"Cool and cute Eli was afraid of the dark?" sings Nozomi breathily. Somehow it doesn't seem mocking, but Eli flushes anyway. "The tips of your ears are adorable."

"That was the biggest block to being an Inspector. After school, when they'd placed me, they saw my problem and I had to undergo intense psychotherapy to get over it so I could get my job." It was a weakness, and it should make her angry. But Eli's feeling slow, lazy. The car heater and the soft seats, Nozomi's dim, twinkling laugh.

Eli wakes up with her car parked illegally outside her mother's complex.


	3. Chapter 3

"Umi! Kotori!"

Eli manages to raise her face from where she's been inspecting exactly nothing but the rough lines in her dry palms – has she been working so hard she's gained more calluses? – just in time to see a tiger-streak of auburn blast through the sweeping headquarter doors. A recovered Rin, who's fast but not fast enough to catch a handful of the blur's coat, almost falls off her chair as it speeds by.

The shape resolves itself into a woman of middling height and reaches the desk where Kotori is leaned half-over Umi's shoulder, smiling bemusedly at a chart of blinking lights. The woman Eli does not recognize grabs Inspector Sonoda and Therapist Minami around the necks and drags their heads in close, a tight armlock like a fastened wrench. Maki's out of her chair with flashing eyes, reaching for a Dominator that isn't at her waist, when Umi chokes, " _Honoka_?"

"Guess who's back?"

Eli slaps the Dominator into Enforcer Kousaka's heavy palms, earning herself a blink from Umi. "Alright, Kousaka, I understand you've been an Inspector in the past. I trust you comprehend how this situation works?"

Something like resentment flashes in Honoka's eyes, and Eli can see a flicker of the riotous energy, crackling with the same danger that caused the second-year Inspector to be demoted. "Yes, Senior Inspector," is all she says, though, and Eli grudgingly gives her newest Enforcer some brownie points for even temper.

"Wait here and introduce yourself to your new partners. See if you can't make friends." Eli leaves her fully-stocked Enforcer group scuffling their shoes awkwardly on the dusty pavement by the police van and stalks over to her juniors standing at the base of the drive. Maki, both attentive and equable, is tapping at her wrist com in communication in Hanayo, monitoring the levels of smoke rising from the once-charming housing complex that is now a wreck of soot and ashes, shooting still-vicious orange sparks into the surrounding area. Eli spares a glance for the chaos, drones swirling with their chemical fire suppressants, and the general nasty tang of acrid smog. It seems to be mostly under control.

"Alright, the family inside has been evacuated, but it seems the smoke damage will be fatal to the adult couple," reads off Eli at the Holo summary on her com. Umi seems tense, gazing at the cool green of the biochemical mist the drones are sweeping in waves. Flecks of the minty substance speckle all the Inspectors like olive freckles as a particularly heavy dose is blanketed over the complex, and Eli brushes off the non-toxic residue impatiently. "We've got a tracker on the arsonist – he's legging it away for some reason, in a complete panic about three, now four blocks over. Send off the Enforcers, and trail them. Umi, you and I will round him off at 3rd Street. Let's go."

Maki jogs off obediently to the Enforcers, who spread out in a loose arrowhead and take to the alleyways, disappearing behind a storefront with smoke-stained glass windows. Eli turns to Umi, and is surprised with her partner's irate stare. "What? We have to get moving."

"Let's walk and talk, then," says Umi stiffly, and Eli, miffed by the tension, whirls around and sets a hard pace down the road. Civilians have been cleared from the arson zone, so the street is unreasonably easy to navigate, but this only makes the rhythmic pounding of the Inspectors' running shoes uncomfortably noticeable.

"Why are you being so rude to Honoka?" asks Umi coldly between smooth huffs as they round a corner to 3rd, and Eli stops to check her street map for the blinking lights that are her Enforcers and Maki. They're currently parallel to Eli's position. "She's been through a lot at the Rehab Center. She doesn't need constant criticism and distrust on the first day, and her first deployment of her new Division."

Eli keeps her eyes on her com, making out the layers of color through the dusk light, and holds the lash of her frustration down with white knuckles. "I don't know what you mean, _Inspector Sonoda_." She bites the pronunciation of the formal title with all of her teeth, hoping the use of it will cue Umi to _stop talking_.

"You didn't allow her to speak as an introduction, you've belittled her experiences, and you've treated her like an annoying first-year," says Umi, brows mashed into one aggressive hooded line like it's been drawn with permanent marker by a child. "She's not an imbecile."

"I won't let emotions cloud my perceptions of this woman!" snaps Eli, and feels Umi recoil next to her, unused to outbursts. "I don't even understand why Director Minami authorized Enforcer Kousaka to be in the same Division as her old partner. It's an awful recipe considering your darkening Hue, and frankly, childhood nostalgia has no place in professional work like this."

Eli's still staring pointedly at her wrist, so she misses her partner's expression as Umi says softly, frostily, "Don't be concerned with my Hue."

Dully, Eli points with her Dominator. "There they come." A lanky young man dashes out from an alleyway, chest heaving as he gasps and checks frantically for an escape route. Rin bounds out of the lengthening afternoon shadows almost at once, Dominator primed, a fierce gleam in her eyes. Nico erupts from the opposite side with Maki right behind her, spreading out like a net. Before any of the others can act, Honoka steps out from the overhang of a street sign directly beside the man and calmly, almost casually, shoots him in the torso. The lack of passerby makes the crunch of the arsonist's face on the sidewalk eerily loud, and Eli watches as his eyelids twitch into stillness. He's only Paralyzed.

"See?" says Umi with a terrible sharpness, "She's perfectly capable of this work." Umi walks towards the Enforcers, early evening shadows painting her navy Inspector's jacket black.

Eli decides to treat the situation with the same subtly she treats any emotional issue – ignoring it and assuming it will go away in time. Though she's a responsible Senior Inspector, she chooses against issuing a formal warning to Umi, both because Eli isn't heartless and she would prefer her partner not hate her irreparably.

Later that evening, Eli's rifling pointlessly through already-completed paperwork at her desk, and refusing to look at Hanayo's topmost monitor, home to the large cropped image of Toujou Nozomi's face, stamped with the _Wanted_ sign that nobody will ever forget. It's so stuffy in the room. She moves to the couch, sits, and immediately feels ridiculous for taking a break even though there's nothing to do.

Eli's bored, so she goes in search of the rest of Division 9.

She wanders down the darker hallways of the CID to the Enforcer's personal chambers, the lot of them impersonal and furnished sparsely. Not much seems to be going on, so Eli's about to disappear out of shame when there's jagged laughter from Rin's room. Eli has a weird moment where her torso moves towards the sound of merriment, but her legs carry on walking her out, so she does a trunk-twist stretch in the middle of the hallway.

Barging in is within her right as Rin's Inspector but seems unspeakably rude, and knocking seems overly formal and wishy-washy about a desire to enter, so Eli stands outside the thin plywood door and calls, "Rin?"

"Eli!" says the youngest Enforcer cheerfully, and yanks the handle open, revealing Analyst Hanayo and Enforcers Honoka and Nico crunched around a truly tiny low-set table in faint lighting behind her, shoveling a rice dish into their faces rapidly. Eli has never seen chopsticks move so fast.

"Good evening," she blurts, and every Latent Criminal in the room pauses to notice her.

Nico wrinkles her nose, but nods a greeting, and Hanayo even puts down her bowl for a moment to smile. Eli finds herself drawn to Honoka, who is the tallest and somehow most commanding of the Latent Criminals. Honoka gazes back with an impeccably blank stare. "How can we help you, Senior Inspector?" she asks, an appalling sarcastic deference in her voice, and Eli winces internally.

"Did you guys cook this food?" She's not sure if she should leave or not. They're her forces, not her friends, but she knows them as people. But they're not people worth knowing, according to Sibyl.

"Yeah, Honoka knows lots of great tips," says Rin casually, and scoops up a chunk of meat dipped in orange sauce with her bare hands and drops it into her mouth, spraying Hanayo gracelessly.

"My family used to run a sweet shop," explains Honoka, and it seems she can't keep up an ice-cold criminal mien for long, because her posture is softening as she speaks, "we did candy, obviously, but my sister and I really got an urge to learn the old ways of cooking. It's an art!"

"I have a sister, too," says Eli, and lately she can't stop sharing personal details with criminals, and keeps going. "We used to dance together."

"I didn't know that, Eli!" says Hanayo, and looks dreamily at her bowl before settling her glasses back on her nose with one finger. "I love watching old movies, with the dancing. I think it's so beautiful."

"Oh yeah, me too," Nico inserts, and wipes the edge of her bowl with one finger, catching the last dregs. "Dancing and singing, that's the highest art form I can think of. I wish I could try it out. I bet I'd be fabulous at it."

There's a slow burning silence after Nico's statement. Eli realizes that none of these women will have their opportunities. Dance, food production, singing… Would they even have been cleared by Sibyl for approved art production?

The Latent Criminals seem to come to this conclusion too. One by one, they drop their gazes to their empty dishes. Empty dreams. But Honoka stares straight at Eli with a seething precision and slightly trembling shoulders. Eli takes her hint, and leaves.

"I found her, Eli, I found Toujou."

Eli blinks twice and then shoots up, scrambling for her com with blind hands on the bedside table. She almost knocks off her glass of water.

"Your heart rate has increased rapidly, Miss Ayase!" says the room Holo brightly. "Are you alright?"

"Yes, yeah, great," says Eli, both to her active com and the Holo. The room silences itself, though presumably it's still observing her biologically, but Eli combs her hair with her fingers and reaches for her Inspector's jacket.

Eli is still fastening the buttons on her jacket when she bursts into headquarters. The whole Division, including Kotori, is mashed together on the downy L couch in front of Hanayo's wall of monitors, Umi gesturing emphatically at an image of an old age temple, stone lions and painted bamboo in swirls of startling reds and pale greens. It's rather lovely, if a bit archaic.

"Good morning, Senior Inspector," chorus some voices, and Umi looks solidly at Eli and says, a little awkwardly, "Here." Hanayo plays a video, managing to wind her arm through the tangle of people on the couch to hit a button.

There must be a scanner affixed to a powerline pole that leads to the temple. Eli is greeted with the video footage of a woman some distance from the lens in traditional shrine maiden garb sweeping a staircase. Her legs tangle in the floating scarlet skirt, and her waterfall of dark hair is bound back, but these details simply serve to emphasize the arching brows and sweet face of an indisputable Toujou Nozomi, working with her eyes closed, swaying in the early morning breeze.

"Oh," says Eli. Then her brain starts firing again, and she says, "How did Toujou miss this camera? Is it some sort of trap?" Now she feels ridiculous for suspecting this. Toujou doesn't look devious, just peaceful.

Umi shrugs. "Everyone slips up sometimes. Let's go get her." Division 9 looks at Eli.

Eli tries to put away the guilt in her mind – it's unreasonable to have an attachment to Nozomi from a conversation where she was intoxicated and Eli was exhausted and unfairly open, emotionally. But she does. "Umi, you've put so much into this investigation. You've definitely proved yourself capable. Please, take the Enforcers and confirm Toujou's position. I'll be out into the field for the capture right after I send a report to Director Minami."

"Yes, Senior Inspector!" says Umi loudly, and Eli hopes this gesture of faith will help smooth out the last conflict with her partner.

"Hanayo," Eli beckons as Division 9 tromps out the door with zeal, Rin on Maki piggyback and Honoka herding Nico, "I need to do a check of my Psycho-Pass. Can we make it quick?"

"Eli, the results are in, and your Criminal Coefficient and Hue are fine. Your CC is 30 flat, and your Hue is clear cerulean." Eli stops pacing around the flat table and takes a deep breath, clenching and unclenching her fists like she's working a nonexistent stressball.. "Are you… really concerned?"

"I don't know," Eli says honestly. She has a sudden fervid desire to confess everything – and then remembers that technically, she has nothing to confess. She hasn't broken any laws. It's not her fault she's being half-stalked by a criminally asymptomatic matchmaker. Or is that flattering herself? Nozomi hasn't done much.

"If you are worried, Eli, I think that you have the mark of someone whose Psycho-Pass will always be okay. You're that kind of person." Hanayo stops typing and looks up at Eli shyly. "I know you're older than me and higher in rank. I hope that didn't offend you."

"No," says Eli, relieved, bolstered. Just knowing her Psycho-Pass is clear makes it clearer. Stress relief. "No, that makes me feel much better. Thank you." She taps her com to send a message to the Director, and receives a triumphant confirmation of Nozomi's location from Umi, clearly written by Rin. There are many exclamation points and several emojis. Good. The day is getting better and better.

To the Director, Eli forwards Nozomi's placement and the update that Division 9 is moving against her. Almost immediately, she obtains a thrilled response. Director Minami is exhilarated at the notion of finally capturing Nozomi, though she won't say why.

Nozomi might look peaceful on camera, but she's fast and deadly in person. The whole situation is bloody, wild.

Honoka gets a good grip on Nozomi's arm and starts to bend backwards, weight and strength in her favor, but Nozomi has what appears to be an emergency pulse emitter that causes wrist coms to _explode_. Nico had her hands up to her face when it went off – she's burned, howling, and Maki, chest and neck doused in dreadful crimson from the shrapnel, stumbles with shivering legs back to the shorter woman to help. Rin's somehow torn the metal strap that keeps the com on her body at all times, and though her wrist looks butcher's-meat raw, she's tackled Nozomi to the ground, rolling down the shrine's stairs with heavy, dull thuds like the sound of a hammer coming down.

Eli, panting, picks a sliver of the com's steel frame from her palm with shaking hands, having avoided most of the blast by sticking her left arm into the open doorway of the shrine. Her arm feels like hell, rivulets of bright red dripping from her wrist, and she can't hold her tranquilizer gun and aim with just one hand. But she darts past Maki, now leaning over an unconscious Honoka, ginger hair dyed ruby, doing emergency surgery of some sort. Umi's high ponytail disappears around a corner, and Eli steels herself, tightens her sweaty grip, and chases.

It's chaos as Eli catches up to Umi. One glance shows that they've both escaped major damage to their bodies outside of the left arm, but the blood coming from their wrists is highly unnerving. "Umi!"

Umi doesn't even look back, gaze sharp like a true hunting dog, face a snarl as she clenches her gun in one hand easily, muscles twitching. "She's just turned a corner, Eli. I'll get her."

The streets are full of people, especially so early in the day, and Eli doesn't have an all-purpose com to organize a drone wall to assist as they weave and, alternatively, shove passerby aside. "We have to go back, Umi, everyone's hurt." Every time one of Eli's feet hits the pavement, her wrist lets out a fresh gush, like pressing on a waterbed with a leak. There's metal inside her skin. It makes her stomach lurch at the thought. Will she faint?

"There's Rin," says Umi, and they watch a few meters ahead through the crowd as Nozomi, slippered feet surprisingly lithe, shoves Rin sideways off of her body into a crew of bright orange construction drones working on painting a scaffolding. The Enforcer's shocked face smacks into the metal shell of a lifter, and she falls flat and doesn't move. Umi raises her hand and shoots a few times over the heads of the civilians, missing completely but at least clearing a path as they shove out of the way.

"Umi, we can't apprehend her in public. People will wonder why we're not using Dominators, Sibyl can't be questioned!" Eli begs.

Nozomi knows the area better than the Inspectors, especially without gear to assist, but she's not as fit. Umi runs her down into a greasy sort of alleyway between two stone buildings. A hefty truck blocks the other exit. Eli runs up behind Umi cornering Nozomi, clicking the trigger on her gun viciously. But it's empty.

Behind them are the sounds of emergency drones. Eli can hear them. _Your stress levels seem to be quite high, ma'am._ Sirens. Lights. She's still losing a lot of blood.

"Umi, we can't," Eli wheezes, and Nozomi, face bruised and robes torn and stained with sweat and what is probably Honoka's blood, still has the gall to smile at Eli.

"Yes, Inspector Sonoda. You can't take me by force," she says slowly, and Eli feels ice burble up and down her spine. "You can't do anything to me. I'm untouchable."

"Shut up," grits Umi through her teeth, gun still clicking, and Eli slides sideways slowly to cover the mouth of the alley completely, despite the pulse she can feel beating violently at her wrist as she tries to raise her shooting arm. Nozomi's so _smart_.

"Does your arm hurt, Inspector Sonoda?" asks Nozomi innocently, and Umi is quivering with rage like an animal taut on a leash. "Was Enforcer Hoshizora alright? It looked painful when she went into that drone."

" _Shoot her, Eli_."

"The cards said today was going to be a tough one. I didn't think it would be this intense, though," Nozomi says mildly, inspecting her dirty sleeve.

"I can't, I can't hold it in one hand, I-"

"Give me your gun, Eli," hisses Umi.

"Aw, you need Eli to get you out of this sort of thing? Poor Umi, always _needing_ somebody to help her out of her circumstances. Poor Umi, always so _lost_ without a leader or a partn-eek!"

Eli backpedals as Umi launches herself at Nozomi and starts beating her with fists and kicks. "Stop, Umi, stop!" There are sickening crunches as Umi pounds her fist into Nozomi's nose and ribs, and Nozomi's coughing but laughing as the emergency drones flood the alleyway.

"I'm picking up some elevated stress levels! Have you tried deep breathing?" says the fat-headed drone as it prizes Umi off Nozomi with an iron grip. Another one holds her shoulders as she writhes, restraining her as Nozomi peels herself off the dirt, wholly ignored by the drones, and hobbles straight by Eli, who drops her gun as her muscles convulse in both of her fatigued arms.

"I'm okay."

"Umi, I'm so sorry. I'm…"

"No, really. I'm okay, Eli. I'll be back after the Rehabilitation. I'll probably even serve in Division 9. Kotori said she'd ask her mother."

"Umi…"

"I'm not upset. I'm going to catch Nozomi – and this time, I can do it myself."

There's a queer echo of her footsteps as Eli taps across the narrow, dank hall. A feeling like a whisper of air scrapes the back of her neck, and a jumping fear of the mysteries in the dark buzzes along her bones in a way it hasn't for years. But there's something familiar about the way she's being watched. "You broke into my house," she guesses out loud.

"I did that," chirps Nozomi daintily from the kitchen stool. Her silhouetted face is suddenly lit from an awkward angle by the handheld device she brandishes, sending deep shadows across her easy face and turning her perky eyes a pale, ghostly ice blue. It's uncomfortably like the gleam of the Dominator. Eli spins to look at her, squinting in the dark to see the slight twist of her nose, the broken skin and bruises across her face and neck.

"How dare you come here? When you've condemned my friend to Rehabilitation and then life as an Enforcer? You've sentenced her to a prison! She'll never be free again!"

"I didn't do anything. Sibyl's the one that dropped her the moment she stopped being a perfect little slave-"

"Do you even realize what you've done this time? You've almost killed half of my Division and ruined Umi's life with your latest stunt! She can't leave the property without my permission; she's miserable and angry and-"

"It was going to happen to her anyway," shoots back Nozomi. "It was her fate. It was in the cards."

Eli curls her lip. "Do you honestly believe in that junk?"

"Fine," says Nozomi, tone as close to irritable as Eli's ever heard in her lazy voice. "Tell me truly - did you never think Sonoda's Hue wasn't in danger of becoming cloudy? Especially in your line of work."

"That isn't the point, Nozomi," says Eli, avoiding thoughts of her own concerns. "You pushed her over her limit. You were the catalyst." A pause. "Why are you even here?"

Nozomi's handheld light goes out, and Eli strains her ears for motion, but all she hears is two people breathing.

"You and me. I think we're alike, in a lot of ways."

"I'm not an asymptomatic criminal guilty of dozens of cyber-felonies and injuries to Police Inspectors," says Eli witheringly. She raises a pointed eyebrow at her new yet unresponsive communicator; then at her room Holos that refuse to activate.

"No, Eli, you're missing the point," urges Nozomi, and Eli rolls her eyes and hopes it's not too dark to miss the motion. "I can tell you're lonely, like me, and tired of it. I think you push yourself too much, and I think you need to rest." She pauses. "The stress of trying to not make any ripples might darken your Hue."

Eli doesn't answer, just fixes the shadowed figure with a death glare that she's been pulling on subordinates for years. What does this woman know about anything? Alright, so they had a pretty good conversation several weeks ago, and maybe Eli revealed her emotional side to an open, sweet, pretty face. That was clearly an oversight, and it won't happen again. It certainly won't happen now.

"How dare you-" she starts again hotly, and then hears a weird splashing noise of liquid against the rough linoleum of her floor. "What?"

"Nothing, Eli," mutters Nozomi. "Just some blood."

"Did you come here _immediately_ after getting attacked?" asks Eli, horrified. "You need to get treated."

"Any hospital I go to will have been tipped off as to my appearance," Nozomi says mechanically. "Then I'll be turned into Sibyl and killed."

Right. Nozomi's an asymptomatic criminal technological terrorist. That reminds Eli to attempt to take her into custody, but as soon as she moves towards the kitchen, she hears footsteps, and Nozomi walks away.


	4. Chapter 4

It's freezing down here, and Eli's stomach churns, fear like a load of stones a crackling crush in her body as she watches Umi slam the target's head into the cement.

"Enforcer So-sonoda," stammers Maki from the sidelines, Dominator in a defensive position as she backs up to a supporting pillar. The piercing blue lights from the police van and the scopes illuminates the underground parking ramp with a harsh, almost alien light, and it dyes Umi's bared teeth a twisted near-white. The way her Hue will never be again.

"That's enough, Umi," Eli commands, not letting her voice shake, and Nico steps in from where the other Enforcers are sort of just staring blankly at Umi beating the target raw, and she Paralyzes the criminal with a precise hit to the shoulder.

They have to step in blood to pick him up.

"What's happened to Umi?" Maki asks uneasily in Eli's car after they've hefted the prone body of the criminal into the back, and the Enforcers are carted back to the CID in the bumpy police van. "I mean, I know she's been demoted, but this is… new."

Privately, Eli thinks that's an understatement of a serious magnitude, but instead of saying so she forces herself to look her junior Inspector – her new partner – head on. "Sonoda Umi has a freedom as an Enforcer. Sibyl allows the hunting dogs to be more hands-on with their captures."

Maki's eyes are so wide, so young, and Eli, apprehensively, is reminded of Rin. There's a brief silence broken only by a faint creak as the autopilot wheel turns smoothly, and Eli braces herself with the seatbelt to avoid leaning too far.

After a burst of static on the car's com, there's only the deliberate glide of the car along the road in the manageable traffic, and Eli loses herself in trying too hard to think about nothing, watching the multicolored neon lights of the city drift by in the early evening shadows. Maki waits until they're almost to the CID before she takes a deep breath. "Umi wasn't supposed to end up like that," she blurts, and she's professional and a realist but she's barely an adult, and so Eli tries hard to loosen up. "We're Inspectors, we're the law; how could she have deteriorated so much if what we're doing is right?"

"Sonoda Umi and Kousaka Honoka were both good Inspectors," Eli says, aware that her lips are barely moving. She can't get this wording wrong; she can't hurt Maki's Hue and have to look at that girl in an Enforcer's suit. But her junior wants the truth. "They simply weren't cut out for this work. It's a real challenge to balance investment and professionalism; it requires emotional distance and a coldness that most people can't believe." Eli slides her gaze sideways, sees Maki with balled fists and stiff shoulders like a statue of war. "My reputation – all Senior Inspectors' reputations – is that we are frigid, nonhuman. We have to be, or we'll be sitting in the back of the police van on the way to hunts."

"It's not fair," says Maki plaintively, like a child. "Umi-"

"Did not have the necessary control. Being an Inspector is recommended by Sibyl's cymatic scans and projected abilities to handle stress. Umi didn't live up to her potential."

"Don't blame her. She worked so hard and she… she lasted two years," say Maki with a gradually dawning horror. "Only two years. What's the record?"

"I don't know," says Eli, pressing back on her rising stress as the car auto-parks itself, and the chill of the parking garage of the CID just reminds her of Umi grinding the target's head into the lot not an hour ago. It's unpleasant.

"And Eli, haven't you been an Inspector for three? That's all it takes to be a Senior? Because everyone else has been demoted?" Maki sounds like she's choking. Eli should stop her, Eli should help her, but all that happens is that she answers bluntly.

" _Yes_."

"You've been doing very well, Senior Inspector Ayase," says Director Minami, eyes dashing over Eli's bi-monthly report.

"Thank you, Director," says Eli automatically, hands clasped behind her back in a loose formal stance. Somehow her division's success feels flat. Not that she isn't proud. But it's taken a lot to get this crew of highly efficient Enforcers. It's taken almost everything – and everyone – Eli has.

The director's office is warm, carefully concealed vents bleeding gently heated air into the unchanging Victorian-style room, and it's taking a chunk of Eli's concentration to not just fall over and sleep. Paperwork and crimes and running down targets through the dingy streets and – well, she's not going to sleep right now, so she won't think about all the tasks she has left to do.

"Two snapped civilians that committed homicide, a rapist, a robber, a drug peddling gang and a bank-hacker, all in the last week and a half," comments Director Minami mildly. "You're doing excellently, as a matter of fact. You're rivalling Division 1. And yet," her eyes dart up to meet Eli directly and Eli forces her straight back even straighter, "No Toujou Nozomi."

"It's been almost two months since we last attempted to apprehend her physically," says Eli at once, ignoring the jolt like a punch to her chest. "There's a constant watch on the temple and the _Eye of Horus_ psychic shop. But there's just been no activity traced to her for ages. She's effectively underground."

"Well, the chances of her having left Japan are almost zero," says the Director, unruffled as a swan on a pristine lake. "She'll have to surface eventually. And we'll take her then."

It's a down day, which means all there is to do is paperwork. At least nobody is bashing one another on the head. Eli is reasonably skilled at the mechanics of rote typing, and for a few hours she's just sitting at her desk in the posture-enhancing chair, typing with a nearly blank mind as various Enforcers from different Divisions drift in and out of headquarters, chatting with Hanayo or Kotori, lounging on the L couch and tossing bits of bread about like confetti. It's messy.

Eli's pretty much done with her reports and check-ups with the other Divisions when her com blinks a new pattern to signify a message. She taps it open with her right hand while her left continues to type.

 _Message from: Toujou Nozomi_. Wait a second.

The first thought that rushes through Eli's mind like a flood is a cresting wave of curses. _Nozomi_. The next is one of spidering, reaching panic. Umi, at least, is not in the room, having gone with Kotori to the dining hall. Hanayo might be able to track this message, though the chances of the usual technology working are probably rather low whenever Nozomi's involved. There doesn't seem to be any obvious reason to not open the message, except the prime one of being in communication with an asymptomatic criminal. Eli has to at least check it, though. Is she overthinking this?

 _Good afternoon, Inspector!  
Sorry it's been so long; I've been busy with recovering and the boring issues that come with that! Complications, blahblahblah. Anyway, here's the good news: just because my Psycho-Pass is broken doesn't mean I have to mess with the system. It seems too challenging to dismantle a century-old way of life, so I'm off to iron out my criminal deeds and become a good, regular civilian, or something. It shouldn't be too hard!  
I hope you are not working yourself to death,  
Toujou Nozomi3_

Well, that was strange and optimistic. Eli fixes her eyes on the swirly little heart at the end of the message and processes swiftly, thoughts like fish darting downstream.

So Nozomi's alive somewhere, and if the letter is to be taken at face value, kicking around in the dust doing self-therapy to control her Coefficient. It may even be confirmation that Toujou will not be in the public eye ever again. This is a good thing. Eli's heart thuds through her sternum – two sharp beats and then a peppering of sharp, fast ones. She feels it in her fingertips like the radiating heat from a fire; stress and indecision and maybe something like regret.

Apparently it's possible to respond to this message, so Eli using two fingers and responds: _Good luck with that._ Keeping it simple can't possibly be incorrect, and if Nozomi is never coming back, there's no guilt or crime in not telling Hanayo.

She gets a second message when she's eating her Sibyl-regulated breakfast in the morning before work, carton of juice tilted back to catch the last pulpy orange dregs, and she almost drops the whole tray onto the linoleum boorishly.

 _Morning, Eli!  
It's possible the East side of the city could use some more officers. There are a lot of Latent Criminals here, and even some fully-realized ones in hiding. I don't know though; the culture here is what I'd imagine one without Sibyl would be like – everyone's very genuine, in all the ways that humans can be. You know, truly angry, the way that burns, or truly sad, a spiraling sort of blue, and it's a depth of emotions that we're not allowed to reach with Sibyl's cymatics. I can't say the system's perfect, and honestly, it does do a lot of good, but at least for me, the loneliness here is lessened, finding people who feel in a fascinating gravity, even if they're technically "evil." Am I being too serious? It reminds me of growing up. For some reason, my Hue never caught my feelings – it always said I was crystal white – so I assumed my emotions were too dim to even register. Now sensations amaze and draw me in. I've learned even stoic souls like you have a lot of passion in there, somewhere!  
Toujou Nozomi3_

Eli can't bring herself to answer this astonishing tirade – it's so early the birds aren't yet awake, and how does one even begin with Nozomi? – but she does forward a warning to Kira Tsubasa of Division 1 to crack down on the East side.

She's escorting Maki to an exploratory observation of Division 3's work a few days later. Five Senior and first-year Inspector pairs are loitering about the CID Dominator Training Room, avidly watching Enforcers gun down combat drones in the domed and candy-colored simulation room on gigantic streaked monitors. Eli's com beeps, like it does for all of the dozens of messages she tends to receive daily as Senior Inspector, but lately the noise has been giving her heart palpitations every time.

She's unlucky, because as she wanders a few meters away from the clustered Inspectors, it's another rambling communication from a certain starry-eyed asymptomatic.

 _Eli,  
I've left the East side because I recognized Senior Inspector Kira and her terrifying posse of Enforcers. The East will be a pristine place when they're done with it. Also, I had to gas some handsy criminals, so it was probably for the best I made my escape!  
Now I'm being a model citizen and helping out with the neighbor's children. They're really cute, so chubby with their snow-white Hues and inquisitive little hands. I can almost braid the hair of the older girl.  
Something I always wonder when I see kids – how does Sibyl know that they'll grow up and maybe kill a man? When does the Coefficient settle? Alternatively – how many are like me? Maybe this whole idea of "latency" is a measure of control rather than real threat. I can't imagine the youngest so much as stealing a marker.  
So sorry for dominating our conversations! How have you been?  
Nozomi3_

What the hell? Eli wants to whip out a stylus and send a twelve-paragraph message about how this isn't even a conversation, but the room's full of ranked Inspectors who might wonder if she starts glowering like a thunderstorm at her com, so she takes a deep breath, unnecessarily flattens down her already even jacket over her chest, and types: _Quit messaging me_.

The response is nearly instantaneous: _Why?_

How infuriating. _I'm working. Specifically, working on capturing you._

The beeping of her com seems to be annoying the Senior Inspector from Division 6. He gives her a side-eye over the edge of his bushy mustache, and Eli, despite the fact that she is a grown woman, has to restrain herself from sticking out her tongue. She signals to Maki she'll be back in a minute. Maki, properly focused on the training exercise on the screen, nods briefly.

 _No point,_ Nozomi's next message reads, and Eli, feeling the dull heat of a flush creeping up her neck, can imagine the criminal smirking in despicably clear detail with her slightly overlarge teeth. _Your Analyst won't be able to track them, and I'm not even a criminal anyway._

 _Once a criminal, always a criminal_ , Eli finds herself reminding Nozomi. _That's how Sibyl works._ If Nozomi responds right away, Eli doesn't hear it, because she turns off her com's messaging system resolutely.

She misses a memo for a Division Leader meeting.

It becomes a daily thing. Eli will wake up with golden flyaway strands of her own messy hair all over her face to an annoying blipping noise from her nightstand at 6:30 AM sharp every morning. It's always the same thing – _Hi Eli! Hope your day is fabulous!_ – or some variation on that, sometimes with overly cute emoticons with a dearth of parenthesis and sometimes cat faces. She's being stalked by an attentive-to-time, thoughtful yet demonic technology genius. It makes her feel like she's entered into a monogamous relationship without noticing. Originally she just ignored it, but now she just says _Thanks_. You too, Nozomi. You too.

She should be turning in these correspondences to Hanayo. She should be including them in reports and possibly cyber-bullying Nozomi with threats and blackmail about all the little personal details the asymptomatic keeps throwing in – like how her parents were rich, apparently, and how she moved schools six times, that she likes to braid hair and read poetry and sing even if she's not great at it – but instead she just saves them in her archive and promises to herself she will do something. Eventually. But only because Nozomi's not hurting anyone, and it's been almost four months since Eli – or any of the Division – has laid eyes on her, and even Director Minami seems to have lost primary interest, seemingly focused on a special assignment Division 2 has got going on. Eli thinks it might be the same situation, maybe with a more interesting asymptomatic.

Not that Nozomi isn't interesting. But she's not a mass murderer, leaving a trail of dismembered corpses like horrific garden decorations all over the South, where Division 2 hangs out. Whoever is in charge of that is simply disturbing. Nozomi's just… sweet, as far as hackers go.

Even Umi's calmed down some, the presence of lovely Kotori and the ever-optimistic Honoka keeping her regulated.

Eli lounges on the L couch in headquarters between assignments and likes to just feel the connections in the room, the way friendships flow between her employees like visible energy warming the room. The childhood trio, yes, but also Inspector Nishikino learning from Nico and Rin how to cook, Hanayo teaching the Enforcers basic coding, how Kotori beats Nico and Umi in arm wrestling and her tinkling giggles that ripple across the room and feel like a blanket of comfort, every time. Something feels like it's breaking when Eli watches these sorts of bonding activities. It might be the barriers between people.

She should be working harder to keep up the boundaries. She should be sending the Enforcers back to their clammy corridors in the depths of the CID and ask Kotori to please keep her distance from the Latent Criminals, but then her com beeps, and it's Nozomi with some silly comment and Nico's teaching the group some ridiculous idol stance – "I thought of it myself, I'll get famous, Nico-Nico-Ni!" and the _laughter_ just melts something icy in her throat and she finds herself smiling, too.

At some point she starts answering the messages.

 _My sister and I used to dance together, but I wasn't as good at it. She was actually approved to be an Artist, though. Her shows are excellent._

 _Oh, how often do you go?_

 _I haven't been for a while,_ Eli types, and feels, at once, awful. When was the last time she put down her Dominator and went to the theatre buildings? _I miss it._

 _Eli loves her sister a lot :)_

 _She used to be very shy. I was always looming over her, protecting her like a big sister, but after I left for higher education, she grew out of her shell. I'm really proud of what she's been up to._

Eli spins aimlessly in her chair, the golden lights of headquarters throwing ochre shadows across the sprawling room. It feels empty this late at night. She raps her nails on the wrist com screen and scrolls through her Holo messages impatiently, even though Nozomi hasn't answered yet. She's tired, and the room smells like candy from the package of sugar-crusted mints and things Honoka's been making in the kitchens. It tickles her nose.

A new Holo from Nozomi pops up, and Eli scans it quickly. _You should go see her more! Family is important._

 _I haven't seen anyone in a while,_ Eli admits. She lives and breathes Latent Criminals, not respectable members of society.

 _Told you that you work too hard._ Well, that's true, but there's hasn't actually been much work lately. With directives straight from Chief Joshu to focus on containing Latent Criminals rather than field work with targets, Division 9 has been more calm than racing about the city. It's a change, and maybe even a boring one, but definitely safer for the Inspectors.

 _Mostly paperwork_. _Wild bureaucracy._

 _Do you like being a part of the CID?_

 _Yes. It's tough, but it has a sense of duty fulfillment, and it's very central to improving life for the majority of citizens._

 _Sounds kind of lonely to me._

Eli hesitates. _Well, it can be. You can't really make friends, or at least you aren't supposed to._

 _Friends, huh? Well then, what are we? :)_

What are they? No. Oh no. Eli has a harsh insight that begins in her stomach and flares up to her ears in a vehement scorch like a flamethrower. No, they're not friends. She spreads her hands out on her immaculate desk and blinks at her wispy skin without seeing the color, or the gold bands on her thumbs, or the flawlessly trimmed nails, because apparently her lungs have stopped functioning.

She has some sort of feelings for Nozomi. She can't even allow herself to think of _what_ feelings.

"These communications have been going back for… almost three months?" asks Hanayo, and blinks with a confusion that Eli's only ever seen in small animals as she scrolls through the archived messages on her monitor. Eli doesn't want confusion. She wants retribution from the team members she's betrayed and possibly a public scolding complete with being fired. She doesn't deserve Kotori's pitying gaze or Rin's sniffling tears ("How romantic!").

Nico seems to be willing to give Eli the disgust she merits for the situation. "You've been fraternizing with that crazy felon? Woooow," she mocks, drawing out her tone in a deep swell, "Perfect Eli isn't so great after all. She's been plotting with the enemy."

"Not plotting," protests Kotori, and even Honoka jerks her head a little to this statement, possibly in support. "I can see how it's basically harmless. Toujou Nozomi hasn't done anything in ages."

"She gassed Umi _and_ Eli, orchestrated a massive robbery, and don't even start to forget about her little explosion stunt!" fires Nico, and waves her arms like wings in frustration. "Shrapnel from that nearly cut my throat and the burns almost killed Honoka!"

Eli can't even look at Umi, who's been silent as death, face a mask of stone as the other Enforcers argue.

"Eli, how could you have been doing this?" asks Maki thickly, and Eli's truly sinking now, seeing her junior partner look at her with such shame. Rin's patting Maki's back consolingly and Eli can't say anything about Inspector/Enforcer boundaries without being a total sham of an authority, so she's about to walk out when Umi speaks.

"No."

"No what?" asks Honoka curiously, who's been mostly silent.

"No. We can… we can _use_ this," says Umi, voice rising slowly.

"What?" choruses Division 9, and Eli's frozen in her humiliation.

"I can't believe I didn't think of this before," Umi says wonderingly. "Eli. You're the one Toujou showed interest in the first time we met. She singled you out with that stupid scanner, and now you've been in emotional communication with her. I mean, look at all of this," Umi gestures to the screen, and everyone's head follows her hand motions helplessly like she's got a string connected to their eyes. "You're the only one who can capture her."

Silence.

"I, I can't, Umi. I just can't."

"Wait a second, you can _do_ this, you can make my demotion worth something, Eli, you can-"

"Umi, no! I'm sorry, I'm leaving," and for the first time in her life, Eli abandons an obstacle, unsolved, and runs before they can see her cry.

Eli's staring at her hands again when the lights in her complex power out, and she holds her breath.

Half a minute later, the door opens. "Hey, Eli?"

"Good evening," Eli manages to choke out. Her hands are shaking to the off-beat tune of her heart. She can't do this, she can't do this. She can't do anything.

Nozomi rounds the corner of the hall and stands for a moment, still as a marble carving in the winter frost. "You said you were hurt." She's bundled against the spring chill, bone-white scarf over the bottom portion of her half-moon face, puffy jacket tight over her chest, lazy pigtails sliding down her back and her purple skirt spread like moon-rays across her knees. She's gorgeous. "Eli, are you crying?"

Eli _is_ crying, not the bawling tears of a child or the destitute gasps of a weary adult, but the dripping silent mess of a person that's broken her own heart. She stands in a ferocious motion and lets Nozomi come closer, and then kisses her hard.

It starts off tame, picturesque, probably, with Eli's hands in Nozomi's hair – it feels wonderful, a fresh layer of frost on rough silk – and Nozomi relaxed, leaning in and smiling and strokes Eli's cheekbones, like some magazine shoot of two girls in love, even if one is wearing a blue t-shirt and sweatpants

It gets more frantic quickly. Eli reluctantly moves back a fraction of an inch to let Nozomi twist and shuck off her outdoor clothes, and in a second they're touching again, and it's less of that adorable sweetness and more like Eli's on fire as Nozomi slides her arms around Eli's waist and leans in and up with her body, shoving closer like a second skin.

Nozomi's got a lightning touch, it burns, and when her short nails scrape under the shirt, to Eli's bare back and the other skates to her neck it stings like electricity. "You're so beautiful, Eli," she says, and Eli would respond to that, it's rude to ignore words, but she's dragging them backwards to the couch and Nozomi collapses on top of her, across her lap.

"I've wanted you since we Matched ages ago," mumbles Nozomi into Eli's neck where she's biting raw red crescent marks into the skin, and rolls her hips, which is cutting off Eli's train of thought as she grasps Nozomi's waist and hangs on under the barrage, eyes screwed shut. "I'm so happy you let yourself feel, Eli." Nozomi swipes her tongue over the lines of Eli's collarbone, a quick, wet heat, and Eli shivers hard.

"Do you think you could take off your shirt, please," Eli manages to cough out, and she's ruby-red and unbearably eager, and her eyes are still watering because everything about this is so very wrong.

"Sure," says Nozomi mildly, and flicks it sideways, apparently without a second thought. Eli does the crude thing and stares brazenly at the sudden exposed edging of royal purple lace– oh God – and then Nozomi returns to sucking Eli's neck raw.

Very slowly, Eli extricates one arm from between their burning skin and carefully traces Nozomi with one light tough, from the visible top knob of her neck down to the base of her spine. Nozomi purrs, arches into the contact, presses them closer. "God, Eli, I think I love you," she starts, bracing herself against Eli's torso to kiss her again, and then Eli plunges the syringe full of sedative into Nozomi's lower back.


	5. Chapter 5

p class="MsoNormal"Bringing in Nozomi is an awful sort of victory. Eli's managed to stuff the other woman's loose limbs into the sleeves of her shirt and fireman-haul her into the car, and now she sits in the front and listens to the rumble of the vehicle as it navigates smoothly through the sparse midnight traffic, eyes on Nozomi's lightly snoring form in the backseat. It's more awkward than she'd thought it would be, and her gaze keeps sliding sideways to the tinted windows and then ripping back to Nozomi's pale, closed eyelids. She wonders what she's willing to do for the good of the city. She wonders if she's made a mistake. She wonders if there was a way to capture the asymptomatic criminal that didn't involve partial nudity, and then she blushes and diverts her attention to the barely-glowing dashboard and all the accompanying buttons, as though someone was watching./p  
p class="MsoNormal"Nobody is, of course, and the drive into the CID building is unimpressively short. Eli pages her Enforcers, the members of her division that are on hand at all hours, and stalks back and forth around her parked car with the strident impatience of a twitchy fox until the Latent Criminals emerge from the adjacent elevator, still pulling on their jackets with sleepy urgency./p  
p class="MsoNormal""What have you got so late, Eli?" Rin yawns./p  
p class="MsoNormal""Didn't you quit or something?" asks Nico. "Are you even our leader anymore?"/p  
p class="MsoNormal"Honoka presses her face to Eli's car and stiffens, muscles tensing like a canine spotting prey. "No way."/p  
p class="MsoNormal"Eli hustles the Enforcers away from the door and opens it. Rin lets out a long, low whistle that echoes over the chilly cement air of the parking garage like the explosion of bottled wind. "Toujou."/p  
p class="MsoNormal"Nico angles herself past Honoka's armpit and gapes into the car. "You emare/em amazing."/p  
p class="MsoNormal"Umi doesn't say anything, just crosses her arms and gazes shallowly at Eli, intent on answers. Eli looks away; straightens the scarf around her neck self-consciously and cringes. It's cold outside./p  
p class="MsoNormal""How'd you do it?" Nico murmurs, and reaches forward to help Honoka heft Toujou's body up./p  
p class="MsoNormal""I'll put it in the report," says Eli warily, and manages to avoid Umi's eyes as the whole troop maneuvers to the elevator./p  
p class="MsoNormal"**/p  
p class="MsoNormal"They acquire a hospital bed from the medical wing – Rin dashes around the corner with the rolling cot, nearly running over a janitor and sending his toolbox flying into the void – and load Nozomi on. Eli can't stop herself from arranging Nozomi's hair so it won't pull under her shoulders, and covering her body with a clean cream sheet from the neck down, and either nobody sees or nobody comments. Probably the latter. Is she being paranoid?/p  
p class="MsoNormal"Director Minami comes down from the head office to Division 9 headquarters as Eli messages her; a definite change. It's weird to see the swany head and shoulders of the director peering around the gap of the door, not surrounded by solid mahogany furniture and pristine posture. But the director is fascinated, excited, nearly hopping as she enters./p  
p class="MsoNormal""Time for the trial."/p  
p class="MsoNormal""Right now?" asks Rin incredulously, and Hanayo, recently awoken, polishes her glasses with a cloth in the corner and squints at the unconscious Nozomi in the center of the room. They've pushed the L couch aside for her./p  
p class="MsoNormal""She's not even going to be awake for hours," protests Eli, and then questions her actions at once. Too defensive? Does she even care, anyway?/p  
p class="MsoNormal""Doesn't matter," says Director Minami with an uncharacteristic glee. "Sibyl can still do a full cymatic scan of an asymptomatic girl. It's simply necessary for her to be present."/p  
p class="MsoNormal""Is she going to be killed?" Eli tries for a nonchalant tone, but Director Minami is still looking past her at Nozomi with barely-restrained attentiveness. Like a slab of meat on pedestal for hunters. Minami raises an eyebrow at Eli's question, though, and it says a lot. Eli shouldn't care, at least not in the bone-burning way she feels. She should be professional, direct, icy. She's done that most of her life, what is she doing? What is she doing now?/p  
p class="MsoNormal""She's not a real threat, I don't think, not anymore," Eli adds weakly, and behind the director Rin and Nico shake their heads emphatically. This statement earns two raised eyebrows, and Eli watches as Nozomi gets taken away./p  
p class="MsoNormal"**/p  
p class="MsoNormal"The next few hours are nerve-wracking./p  
p class="MsoNormal""Why are you still here?" asks Nico as Eli shuffles papers worthlessly on her desk, and there's no acid in her voice, just concern. "It's the middle of the night, and you just wrapped up the biggest case of the year. You should sleep. Or something."/p  
p class="MsoNormal""There's no need to tire yourself out any more," says Hanayo helpfully, and spins in her swivel chair, kicking her feet like a child./p  
p class="MsoNormal""Unless you want to celebrate!" Rin bursts, and high-fives Honoka, whose eyes widen enthusiastically./p  
p class="MsoNormal""We can get some delicious bread!"/p  
p class="MsoNormal""emHell/em yeah!"/p  
p class="MsoNormal""You guys don't even know how to emeat/em bread like proper gourmets, let alone emmake/em it," Nico says./p  
p class="MsoNormal""Oh emplease/em make us some, Nico!" Honoka whines, and wow, this is happening. "You're such a good cook."/p  
p class="MsoNormal""Yeah, like, the best," Rin adds supportively./p  
p class="MsoNormal""No, we should go back to bed," Umi interjects, and Rin and Honoka visibly deflate. Umi steps toward Eli, still fiddling with her aimless sheets by her inbox. "You did well."/p  
p class="MsoNormal"Eli looks at Umi; sees the ancient chill in the amber gaze of a woman many worlds colder. Eli has always been the Senior Inspector, the responsible, mechanic one, but Umi's always been farther away somehow. They've both paid for who they are, Umi more so. Eli's done the lawful thing, and she's got her praise, and she'll probably get some sort of bonus; maybe a shiny plaque with her name on it in seraphic bronze lettering. And maybe she won't break her own heart next time./p  
p class="MsoNormal""I'm going home. I'll see you guys later."/p  
p class="MsoNormal"She can feel the eyes of Division 9 watch her go./p  
p class="MsoNormal"**/p  
p class="MsoNormal"It's like she's spinning. Could it be the lack of sleep? It's probably the sleep that's making her eyes water and her chest tight and aching, and even if she did take some medication, she's not about to admit that the first thing she did when she got back to headquarters was sit down hard and re-read her old messages from Nozomi with something like nostalgia. Her face burns everywhere Nozomi's touched it./p  
p class="MsoNormal"emShit/em. She's wallowing, isn't she? It's not productive, plus it will distract her from… whatever they've got going on now. She can't even remember./p  
p class="MsoNormal"When Maki walks in shaking out her rain-damp jacket, and smoothing back the wild stray hairs that have escaped her neat bun, Eli ambushes her at once./p  
p class="MsoNormal""Maki!"/p  
p class="MsoNormal""Good morning, Eli! Nice job with the Toujou case, I'm really-"/p  
p class="MsoNormal""Do you know what happens to asymptomatic criminals?"/p  
p class="MsoNormal""I-what?"/p  
p class="MsoNormal"Eli inhales, tastes the air of fresh rain still on Maki's person, and wishes headquarters had direct windows outside to watch the weather. Perhaps it would be soothing. Perhaps it would drive her crazy. "There's not much going on yet today, so your assignment is to discover links between previous asymptomatics detected and apprehended by Sibyl."/p  
p class="MsoNormal"Maki cuffs her jacket and swishes it back and forth, wrinkling her nose. "They're supposed to be secret, aren't they? Or classified, rather. How should I even begin to look through the records for people who shouldn't even exist?"/p  
p class="MsoNormal""Civilians who are checked in to the CID and never check out," says Eli, thinking rapidly. "Ones that don't go on record as Latent Criminals, ones who disappear into the paperwork. Follow up on them – where do they go?"/p  
p class="MsoNormal""Right, okay," says Maki, who clearly doesn't wish to argue the point. With a half-glance and a stately shrug, she exits to research./p  
p class="MsoNormal"**/p  
p class="MsoNormal"Eli finds Umi in the Enforcer's chambers in the underground, sitting primly on a plain, wooden chair and frowning at the wall. She looks positively terrifying, all that iron focus and steady hands./p  
p class="MsoNormal""Knock, knock," says Eli lamely, as the door's wide open. Umi curves at the waist to check out the intruder, and when it's just the Senior Inspector, she blinks./p  
p class="MsoNormal""Morning."/p  
p class="MsoNormal""Look," says Eli, and steps further into the room. Umi doesn't stop her, so she makes her way to the wall and, with nothing better to do, leans her back up casually against the chill cement. The stone drains her warmth, just like this job is draining her sanity. No, she should be more positive. "I'm sorry. I'm so awfully sorry that I didn't use everything I had to apprehend Toujou before you had to be demoted." Now she sounds like she's blaming Umi for being an Enforcer. Why can't she make things simple?/p  
p class="MsoNormal"Umi gazes forward, serene as the sea at dawn. There's a certain timelessness in her face, a new patience like an old god. "It was inevitable."/p  
p class="MsoNormal"The three words hit home like a blade on a sheet of thin ice, and Eli feels them crack her across the chest. This is her fault, and Umi is so incredibly strong, she'll take anything./p  
p class="MsoNormal""Honestly Eli, I don't mind. It's almost freeing, to be here. I can do what my mind was made to do – catch criminals – and I can do it my way, now. Being with Honoka and Kotori is good, too."/p  
p class="MsoNormal"Is there much more to say to that? Eli hesitates – she's always hesitating – and makes to leave, heaviness inside her bones./p  
p class="MsoNormal"**/p  
p class="MsoNormal"Maki comes back after lunch, Nico idling behind her as she approaches Eli./p  
p class="MsoNormal""That was quick," Eli manages, and pretends she hasn't been loitering around the CID building in random places, reading her stupid com archive of Nozomi's messages. They know, though. It's in their pitying expressions, shadowed under the professional guise./p  
p class="MsoNormal""We're armed to the teeth with data," Nico says. "It's pretty easy to figure out which unlucky civilians checked in were asymptomatic, if you know what to look for."/p  
p class="MsoNormal""Nico basically just scanned the records for people with pure white Hues brought in, and checked up on their registers," explains Maki easily./p  
p class="MsoNormal""Results?" Eli asks weakly./p  
p class="MsoNormal"Nico and Maki exchange loaded glances. "They just seem to… disappear," says Nico slowly./p  
p class="MsoNormal""Gone," echoes Maki./p  
p class="MsoNormal""Eli," says Hanayo from across the room, urgently./p  
p class="MsoNormal"Eli runs her palms across her stomach, smoothing her navy jacket as best she can with exhausted, jerky movements, and joins the young analyst at her official desk. "Yes?"/p  
p class="MsoNormal"Hanayo speaks, too loudly, drawing in the others: "Your Hue has darkened."/p  
p class="MsoNormal""emWhat/em?"/p  
p class="MsoNormal""NO, Eli," hisses Maki, and darts up with a previously unseen fear. "You… you can't leave me to be the only Inspector. You're the best, really, Division 9 needs you," she begs, and grinds her teeth. It's an oxymoronic image – serious, young Maki, trying so hard to be emreal/em. Eli blinks./p  
p class="MsoNormal"Umi and Honoka choose this moment to return from lunch, walking in arm-and-arm. "What's going on?"/p  
p class="MsoNormal""Eli's Hue is going dark," says Rin carefully, a strangely blank expression written across her face./p  
p class="MsoNormal""Eli!" roars Umi at once. "Don't you emdare/em go the same way as me!"/p  
p class="MsoNormal""Don't do it," warns Honoka in rare seriousness./p  
p class="MsoNormal""I'm not emtrying/em to do anything!" protests Eli, but gets shouted down by her Enforcers in a rolling thunderwave of sound./p  
p class="MsoNormal""Pull yourself together!"/p  
p class="MsoNormal""God, if you get demoted to my rank you'll show me up even more."/p  
p class="MsoNormal""It's awful, Eli, it's just awful-"/p  
p class="MsoNormal""You deserve so much, please, no-"/p  
p class="MsoNormal""emEli/em."/p  
p class="MsoNormal""I'm fine!" Eli says sharply, and silence falls. She looks across the faces – earnest Maki, solid Umi, the mischievous and cruel energy in Rin beside the purposefully casual Nico. Honoka's bright will for justice and the subsequent fall from grace – it's like a story, each of them, written over their faces and eyes in desperation and the hunger for change that's ruined them; imprisoned them. Hanayo watches Eli with doe-eyes of a girl who hesitates to kill mosquitos, and Eli wishes suddenly, that these people were free, because they're not evil. None of them are evil in the way Sibyl has labeled them./p  
p class="MsoNormal"Eli pulls herself together. "I'm going to take a walk, but I'll be back." She takes them in, feels a pulse of affection across her wrists, in her heartbeat. "I won't let you down."/p 


	6. Chapter 6

_Two months later_

Her Enforcers move like a dance.

Umi vaults over the edge of the shocking-pink stair rail in the training center and lands on the balls of her feet, balancing with edgy swiftness. Rin rockets after her, falling like a cat and twisting in midair, Dominator between her teeth like the wild girl she is.

Honoka holds the combat drone in a headlock some twenty feet away in the middle platform of the training center, bare forearm muscles straining against the firm plastic of the flailing dummy, and Nico pounds it in the torso, calloused hands landing a barrage of meaty blows.

"Down," Eli hears Umi command the team through the glass observation window, and Honoka rolls backwards and kicks the drone with both legs, and Nico dodges, sliding back and sideways as Umi aims and Rin guards, prowling back behind the once-Enforcer with a maniac grin.

The Dominator shot takes out the drone, shell of the machine denting as the Paralyzer embeds the bullet into the cottony-colored pearl coating. It sparks, twice, and then the light behind the blue eyes fizzles out, and the drone slides to the ground.

"Release round 4," Eli says into the com, and three new drones rise from ascending plates in the center, and the Enforcers move together once more.

Maki is leaning straight up against the glass window, fingers twitching as she watches Nico dodge a drone's slamming arm. Rin tosses Nico one of the two Dominators, and the shorter woman takes out the drone with a breathtaking point-blank forehead shot. Hanayo, watching several different monitors of different angles, squeaks as the drone explodes.

"Umi, guard Honoka's left more efficiently," Eli commands. Umi, who's been sidling to the right, realigns herself just in time to kick away a drone that leaps for Honoka.

Kotori, typing on her wrist com, looks up at the mention of Umi, watches the Enforcer beat away another drone aimed for Rin, and smiles indulgently.

The exercise is almost done when the door to the observation room slides open with a hiss of air. Eli's still scribbling on her clipboard – Rin has excellent teamwork with Nico, but she favors overly-aggressive stunts that leave openings for enemies to target her Enforcer partner – and Maki, who turned to glance at the open door, tugs vaguely on Eli's sleeve.

It's Director Minami in her ash-gray suit and waterfall hair. She looks serious. Behind her is Toujou Nozomi.

Eli doesn't drop the clipboard, because she's a serious Senior Inspector, and also because she may or may not be dreaming. How hard is she breathing right now?

Nozomi stands with her weight balanced on one leg, in a chaste golden sundress that hangs from her newly emaciated and pale frame. Her hair is thin and her face is gaunt, but she watches Eli from behind Director Minami with eyes that still gleam brightly. Kotori blinks at the arrival of her mother, but stays silent.

"What is Toujou Nozomi doing here?" asks Maki aggressively, half in front of Eli like the criminal's going to charge. Director Minami forces a tight smile, and Hanayo visibly shrinks in the corner.

"Ms. Toujou was offered a position with Sibyl, but refused. She was asked to reconsider, and recently agreed. However, after further testing, Sibyl has decided she is not quite suited to the career at hand, and has been reduced to Technology Analyst."

The doors to the training center swing open, and the Enforcers spill into the observation room.

"Did you see how I tackled that one drone, Eli?" asks Rin brightly. "I landed on its head. It was great!"

Umi freezes, causing Honoka and Nico to run into her back.

"Keep up the excellent work, Division 9," Director Minami says delicately, and vanishes, leaving Division 9 staring at Nozomi, who is watching Eli with a single focus that might be unnerving. If Eli could breathe.

"What the _actual hell_ is going on?" Nico wants to know.

"My Criminal Coefficient is 107," says Nozomi, and half the Enforcers blink, having never heard the asymptomatic speak in her sugar-soft voice.

"What does that have to do with anything?" says Nico after it's clear nobody else is going to respond. She glances around as though looking for support. Mostly, Division 9 looks shocked. Umi looks grim. The silence is thick; the air is icy. Eli can't feel anything.

"Sibyl only looks for true criminals," Nozomi says. She finally breaks Eli's gaze and glances over the assembled members of Division 9, and weirdly, smiles. "Nine members in Division 9."

 _Irrelevant,_ Eli's mind supplies, and there, good, her brain is functioning again. She manages to take in a ragged inhale, and half of Division 9 swirls their heads to watch her breathe.

"Pardon my inquiry," says Umi in a frosty tone that suggests anything but apology, and Kotori crosses to stand beside her supportively, flowing hair swishing outward like wings, "but why are you alive?" The implication in her tone – _Sibyl should have snuffed you out like a bug_ – is clear.

Nozomi answers, addressing Eli. "I've been preserved for my skills with technology. My task is to produce better, more stable mechanisms to increase the power of Sibyl." She bends at the waist and lifts the edge of her shimmering dress to just past the ankle. A thick, ugly steel ring wraps around the slight bone. "If I go farther than the CID grid, this tightens and removes my foot. Also, an electric shock knocks me out."

"Lovely," Eli pushes through her teeth. Maki and Kotori watch her with concern. Nico shakes her head and shrugs widely, knocking Rin and Honoka with her shoulders.

"Whatever, word of Sibyl. Sounds good, welcome to the team." Everyone stares at her flippancy until Maki seems to realize where she's going with it.

"Oh yeah. Well, I'm going to go check... Something." Maki scoots out, Nico on her tail, and Hanayo is dragged out by the hand of a ferociously grinning Rin.

"Nozomi, you're crazy. I look forward to working with you," Rin throws out as they disappear around the door frame.

"I'm going to shower off," says Honoka awkwardly, and Kotori nods quickly, hair bow bobbing, and they both put a hand on one of Umi's tense shoulders.

"I don't forgive you," says Umi carefully, icy fog practically spilling off her tongue, but she composes herself. "We'll see." The trio exits.

Somehow Eli and Nozomi have been left alone. This is odd. Eli finds herself too awkward in every motion – her clipboard is bulky against her chest, her arms hang weirdly – does she have some greens in her teeth? She plunges one hand into her jacket pocket and comes up with a very crumpled, ripped card.

"Is that a tarot card?" asks Nozomi clearly, and Eli can hardly look at her, because they've changed so much and yet nothing has changed between them. It's like dance partners; it's like gravity. It's like looking in a mirror and seeing a girl utterly strange but perfectly familiar.

"I suppose," Eli says as indifferently as possible. She should apologize. "Nozomi…"

"I forgive you," Nozomi interrupts. "I understand; our minds are the same, really, and if I had to, I probably would have done it, too."

That's a lie, Eli knows it, and has a feeling Nozomi does, too. Betrayal – choosing the government over what may or may not be true love, well, that's embarrassing – but Nozomi starts smiling.

"What card is that, Eli?"

She looks down and squints at the worn coloring between the thick creases. It's been in her pocket for months, shoved away; hidden. "It's a sun."

"Excellent news for you," says Nozomi, and she's somehow gotten much, much closer. She grabs one edge of the mangled card that Eli's still got a grip on, and leans in. She smells warm, somehow. "It means things will start looking up. It means freedom. Vitality." Nozomi stares into Eli's eyes. "Beauty. Happiness."

"That's great," Eli succeeds in stuttering out. Nozomi rolls her eyes and leans in.

It's still an awful kiss, but it's comforting in its awkward roll, and Eli lets the spark of Nozomi's hands trace her everywhere. When they break to breathe more comfortably, Eli realizes what this means.

"Analysts can't get married, or have kids, or leave headquarters."

Nozomi throws her hands up and looks impatient. "I don't care about anything. I just want you after this mess."

"There's still going to be danger. I mean, my job is nowhere near safe or certain."

"There will always be danger."

"You might... Any of us could die on any given day."

"None of us are immortal, Eli."

"You're sure?"

"I am so sure about you."


End file.
